Impact of clean intermittent catheterization on quality adjusted life years (QALYs) in spinal cord injury patients with neurogenic urinary incontinence.

AIMS: The impact of clean intermittent catheterization (CIC) on quality adjusted life years (QALYs) gained in adults' spinal cord injury population with neurogenic urinary incontinence (UI).

METHODS: Patients were recruited from the national registry January-June 2014. The inclusion criteria were adults, neurogenic UI due to spinal cord injury (SCI), use of collection devices and CIC for more than 6 months. The exclusion criteria were inability to perform CIC, cancer of the lower urinary tract and fistulas formation. Measurement tools were the International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire-Urinary Incontinence Short Form (ICIQ-UI SF) and an estimation of life expectancy by the national registry. The calculation of the weighting factor (WF) was obtained by linear transformation of the ICIQ-UI SF total score. A score was transformed to the range from 0 (worst impact) to 1 (no impact). The QALYs was calculated as the weighting factor × life expectancy in years.

RESULTS: A total of 229/365 patients were involved in this study (63%). Patients before CIC reached an ICIQ mean score of 14.83, WF of 0.29, and QALYs of 9.02 during life expectancy. After 6 months of follow-up using CIC, ICIQ reached 9.12, WF 0.57 and QALYs 17.45. The number of QALYs increased by 93.5% and UI evaluated with the ICIQ-UI SF decreased by 38.5% (P < 0.01).

CONCLUSIONS: The CIC of the urinary bladder statistically significantly increased the number of QALYs and reduced the degree of UI in SCI patients.