Overactive bladder (OAB) is a complex syndrome and can significantly decrease the quality of life. Patients suffer from urinary urgency, frequency, and nocturia either with or without urinary incontinence. According to the epiLUTS study, 43% of the female responders reported OAB symptoms [1]. Because of this high prevalence rate, several questionnaires were developed to screen patients for OAB. OAB-V8 questionnaire is one of the most popular ones but to increase clinical usage and save time, researchers have shown the efficacy of three question forms of OAB-V8 called OAB-V3 [2]. However, these validation studies included both male and female patients together. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of the OAB-V8 questionnaire by applying it only to the female population. We also examine to reduce the number of questions of the OAB-V8 in the women population specifically.

After the approval of the institutional review board, records of 2089 women (age >18) who had attended a university hospital-based urogynecology clinic for pelvic floor disfunction were reviewed retrospectively. All patients completed OAB-V8 questionnaire during their initial visit and urinary tract infection was excluded with urinalysis. Women with urgency, nocturia and frequency according to the 3-days bladder diary (≥8 micturition/day) were diagnosed as OAB syndrome in our study. Continuous variables were presented as median and interquartile ranges whereas categorical variables were presented as number and percentage. Descriptive statistics of continuous variables were compared between groups using Mann-Whitney or t-test according to their respective distribution properties. Fisher-exact test was used for comparing categorical variables between groups. Inter-Item and Item-Total Correlation analyzes were performed to measure the correlations. A p-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.

The study population consisted of 767 patients. 455 patients were in the control group and 312 patients were in the OAB group. Mean age and BMI were significantly higher in the OAB group (Table 1). The mean score of the OAB-V3 was 9.90±3.55 and OAB-V8 was 25.6±9.04 in the OAB group. Although the questions present in OAB V3 showed a high correlation with OAB-V8 results (Pearson's r = 0.938, P<0.01). According to the correlation analysis, the total score obtained from adding values of questions 2, 6, and 7 showed best correlation with the OAB-V8 results (Pearson's r= 0.956, P<0.01

In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of OAB-V3 in women with OAB. Although the OAB-V3 showed an excellent correlation with the OAB-V8, another combination showed a better correlation with the OAB-V8 than OAB-V3. On this combination, questions associated with urgency and nocturia were present rather than urinary frequency.

OAB is a common but unspoken problem and short questionnaires can be used for screening the female patients for OAB. Using questions, focused on urgency and nocturia, would be more efficient to screen OAB syndrome in women

Milsom I, Kaplan SA, Coyne KS, Sexton CC, Kopp ZS. Effect of bothersome overactive bladder symptoms on health-related quality of life, anxiety, depression, and treatment seeking in the United States: results from EpiLUTS. Urology. 2012 Jul;80(1):90-6
Coyne KS, Margolis MK, Bavendam T, Roberts R, Elinoff V. Validation of a 3-item OAB awareness tool. Int J Clin Pract. 2011 Feb;65(2):219-24