PRIMUS
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Primary care Management of lower Urinary tract Symptoms in men: Development and validation of a diagnostic and decision-making aid.
IRAS ID
223941
Contact name
Adrian Edwards
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cardiff University
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Many men, particularly those who are older are experiencing problems passing urine. They may need to pass urine more frequently than usual, find their sleep interrupted by having to go to the toilet during the night, slower urine flow rate or even a loss of bladder control. These problems are grouped into what we call Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms (LUTS), which can be particularly unpleasant for men, impacting on their work and social life, and usually prompting a visit to the GP for treatment.
GPs have no easy way of identifying common causes of LUTS, or the best options to relieve symptoms. This means that men are usually referred to hospital for specialist urology tests, and often have treatment that could have been given out by the GP, such as medication and lifestyle changes.
The aims of the PriMUS study is to create a ‘decision aid’ to help GPs find out the most likely cause of patients’ urinary symptoms, so that together they can choose the best management. The decision aid will be a programme on a computer, where the GP will enter patient information and test results. The software will then display the most likely cause of symptoms and suggested management options.
In order to create the decision aid, we need all men taking part to have simple index tests, as well as a more invasive test called ‘urodynamics’, which is the gold standard test to determine the cause of urinary symptoms. We can then work out how the less invasive tests above relate to results from urodynamics, so that in the future only the less invasive tests are needed.
We believe that this will have many benefits such as getting to the right treatment sooner, avoiding unnecessary hospital visits, and getting those who need to be treated by a specialist there more quickly.
REC name
Wales REC 6
REC reference
17/WA/0155
Date of REC Opinion
20 Jun 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion