A Correlation Study of International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) and Visual Prostate Symptom Score (VPSS) Study in Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia Cases

Background International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) is one of the popular scoring tool to evaluate and assess patients who have prostate enlargement. IPSS contains questions that hard to assess by elderly and low educated patient. Visual Prostate Symptom Score (VPSS) has been recently developed and hoped to be an alternative to IPSS. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that VPSS can be an alternative of IPSS in evaluating patients who have lower urinary tract symptoms, especially prostate enlargement. Methods This study used prospective cohort design. IPSS and VPSS (Indonesian version) were applied to evaluate 65 patients with prostate enlargement at initial visit and at the time of their follow-up examination 2 months after given medication with tamsulosine. Then, the scores of IPSS and VPSS were compared between. To evaluate the relationship of IPSS and VPSS of those patients at their initial visit and2 months after medical treatment, Spearman correlation test was applied. Results Total VPSS, VPSS voiding symptoms, VPSS storage symptoms, and VPSS quality of life (QoL) have significant correlation with total IPSS, IPSS voiding symptoms, IPSS storage symptoms, and IPSS QoL (with correlation coefficient, p-value : 0,597, <0,001; 0,410, <0,001; 0,676, <0,001; and 0,809, <0,001; respectively). There was also a significant correlation of change in total IPSS with change in total VPSS after medical treatment (correlation coefficient, p-value: 0,341,<0,001). Conclusion This study demonstrated that VPSS can replace IPSS to evaluate patients who have lower urinary tract symptoms, especially patients with prostate enlargement.