Level of agreement and acceptance of the 20-Minute versus 60-Minute sanitary pad test as a method for measuring the severity of stress urinary incontinence: randomised crossover trial

Abstract

We aimed to measure the level of agreement and acceptance ratio of the 20-minute versus 60-minute sanitary pad test in female patients with stress urinary incontinence (SUI). This is one-sample cross-experimental design. SUI patients at the Urogynecology Outpatient Clinic at Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia were consecutively enrolled as participants. We first administered the 20-minute test, followed by the 60-minute test, or vice versa, within 1 week. The participants did not know the type of test performed or asked during the interview. Random Number Generator software by stattrek.com was used to determine which test was performed first for each participant. Participants were interviewed using a questionnaire at the end of each test. The 20-minute sanitary pad test exhibited a good level of agreement with the 60-minute sanitary pad test (kappa R = 0.84). Forty-two respondents (84.0%) reported that they were “satisfied” with the 20-minute sanitary pad test and eight respondents (16.0%) reported that they were “very satisfied”. There was a good agreement between the 20-minute and 60-minute sanitary pad test for assessing the severity of SUI. The 20-minute sanitary pad test achieved a relatively higher level of participant satisfaction.

Impact statement

• What is already known on this subject? Patients at the Urogynecology Outpatient Clinic at Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital have a positive acceptance in the 20-minute and 60-minute sanitary pad test for assessing the severity of SUI.

• What do the results of this study add? From this result, the authors considered that this method can help in assessing the severity of SUI, especially in Indonesia.

• What are the implications of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? As these findings, the authors think that they might be useful as a standard of assessed the severity of SUI. This method does not harmful and easy to apply for every patient with SUI.

Keywords:

• Pad test
• stress urinary incontinence
• agreement
• satisfaction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).