Background: Overactive bladder (OAB) is defined by subjective symptoms such as urgency, frequency, and urge incontinence, rather than objective measures. Using questionnaires like OABSS can help in diagnosis and evaluation of patients'symptoms for further assessment.
Objective: To evaluate test-retest reliability of OABSS in 2-week interval and to evaluate the correlation of OABSS with voiding diary, IPSS, and PPBC.
Material and method: Between August 2009 and January 2011, 56 Thai women aged more than 18 years, attending urogynecology clinic at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital were recruited in the study. They were diagnosed as having the overactive bladder with these criteria, symptoms of urinary frequency, urgency with or without urge incontinence, for more than three months, and at least one episode of urgency with or without incontinence in last three days. After giving the written informed consents, the patients were instructed to complete the voiding diary before starting the study and at the second visit (two weeks apart). The Thai version of self-answered questionnaires (OABSS, IPSS, and PBC) were also given at 0- and 2-week visit. The questionnaires were translated by one linguist from the Language Institute, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and translated back by another linguist to English. The content and language validity were checked by one urogynecologist at our department. The study was conducted after the protocol was approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB).
Results: The test-retest reliabilities (intraclass correlation) of the OABSS, PPBC, and IPSS total score were 0.88, 0.44, and 0.85. The overall Cronbach's alpha of OABSS was 0.31 and 0.41 at 0- and 2-week respectively.
Conclusion: Thai version of OABSS was reliable, valid, and related to the abnormal voiding symptoms. Further use of Thai version OABSS questionnaire was advocated for both clinical study and clinical practice in Thai women with OAB.