Introduction: The American Urologic Association (AUA) proposed a minimum data set to be reported for peer-reviewed surgical literature regarding female stress urinary incontinence (SUI) surgical outcomes in 1997. Ten years following this publication, a review suggested that adherence to these parameters was suboptimal1. With the updated AUA/SUFU female SUI guidelines in 2017, we aimed to assess more contemporary adherence among recently published literature with respect to the original proposed minimum data set.
Methods: A literature search through Pubmed and MUSC OVID databases was conducted using terms ‘stress urinary incontinence’, ‘surgery’ and ‘female’ from January 2005 to December 2020 and cross-referenced this list with the AUA/SUFU SUI Guidelines literature list. Articles were excluded if they did not report on surgical outcomes, or if they reported on males, nonhumans, or pediatric populations, case reports or series, reviews or meta-analyses, and articles focused on diagnosis, or complications, or neurogenic or detrusor related incontinence. Articles were reviewed for the previously defined 22 parameters recommended to be included in SUI surgical outcomes literature such as length of follow up, definition of success, and adverse events. A data point was considered fulfilled if there was any mention or reference to it in any section of the paper. Each article received a compliance score as the percentage of parameters met out of the 22.
Results: 371 articles met the inclusion criteria. The average article compliance score was 62%. There were no articles that were 100% compliant with all of the suggested parameters. The parameters with the highest adherence rates of the published articles were history on the pretreatment evaluation (97%), criteria for success (95%), and complications (90%). The parameters with the lowest adherence rates were preoperative urodynamics (9%), minimum follow-up > 48 months (11%) and postoperative diary (15%). There were similar rates of overall compliance scores between articles published before and after the SUFU/AUA 2017 guidelines were published (61% vs. 63%). There was an increase usage of QoL questionaries' for post-operative evaluation (85% pre vs. 94% post) and increase usage of post-operative physical exam (67% pre vs 78% post).
Conclusions: Adherence to reporting the proposed minimum data set for literature regarding female SUI surgical outcomes has remained largely suboptimal. The lack of compliance may suggest a role for a more stringent editorial review process or alternatively that these defined data points are overly burdensome or not relevant.
Source of Funding: NIH/NIDDK Institutional Training Grant, “Short-term Research Training for Health Professional Students” (T35 DK007431).
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