Effects of aging on generic SF-36 quality of life measurements in Hong Kong Chinese women with urinary incontinence.

Background: To evaluate the relationship between aging, urodynamic diagnosis and generic quality of life measurement in Chinese women with urinary incontinence.

Methods: A total of 170 women presented to a university teaching hospital with urinary incontinence were recruited. The women completed the medical outcome survey, short form-36 (SF-36), immediately before they had the urodynamic investigation. The women were classified into either (1) genuine stress incontinence (n = 94) or (2) detrusor instability (n = 76). The relationships between aging, the transformed subscale scores, the population standardized component summary scores of the SF-36, and the two groups of women were studied using simultaneous multiple regression analysis.

Results: There was no significant difference in the age distribution between the two groups of patients (median age: 47 vs. 48, p = 0.18). However, aging causes significant impairment in the physical functioning (p < 0.001), role physical (p = 0.002) and bodily pain (p = 0.047) domains as well as the physical component scale (p < 0.001) of generic SF-36 quality of life measurements. There was no significant difference in the transformed subscale scores and the component summary scores with respect to different urodynamic diagnoses after adjustment for the effect of age.

Conclusions: Aging causes significant deterioration on physical performance for Chinese women suffering from urinary incontinence. The generic SF-36 questionnaire was unable to detect a significant difference in quality of life measurement between women suffering from genuine stress incontinence and detrusor instability.