de Almeida JCM, et al. – This research was targeted on the clinical test of an enhanced and portable version of a previously described urethral connector (UC), designed for minimally invasive measurement of vesical pressure and diagnosis of infravesical obstruction in men. The current study displayed that the urethral connector test can support the diagnosis of infravesical obstruction in a comparable way as that of the conventional urodynamic method, nevertheless with the advantages of simplicity and minimal invasiveness, having thus the potential to be an alternative method for long term follow–up of individuals reporting lower urinary tract symptoms.

Methods

• Researchers applied the conventional pressure-flow study (PFS) and the test with the new version of UC to individuals reporting lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), who were then categorized as obstructed or non-obstructed/equivocal based on the bladder outlet obstruction index (BOOI) from PFS data.
• They applied two-way analysis of variance to correlate the values of urine flow rate and vesical pressure between methods and diagnoses.

Results

• The results of this study showed that vesical pressure and urine flow values were not significantly different between methods (P?>?0.05), while the former was greater in the group classified as obstructed.