Subjective and objective parameters in the preliminary assessment of patients with benign prostatic hypertrophy

Abstract

The preliminary evaluation of a patient with benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH) usually starts in urological out-patient departments backed up by simple radiological and ultrasound examinations. In daily clinical practice, it is often this evaluation which guides the specialist in judging the seriousness of the case and therefore in choosing the most suitable therapeutic strategy. The Authors rapidly review the means available to the urologist, in the past and today, when approaching a patient with BPH, paying particular attention to the increasingly more popular questionnaires (the so-called Symptom scores “SS”). These are means which are capable of guaranteeing specialists use of a common language, of standardising therapeutic indications and of evaluating results in an analogous way. If their “valdity” is not checked, however, they have the drawback of being unsuitable for self-compilation given the social-cultural diversity of the population to be examined.