Sensory urgency: how full is your bladder?

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Abstract
Objective— To investigate whether women with sensory urgency have an abnormal perception of bladder fullness. Design— Prospective observational study. Setting— Urodynamic Unit, St George's Hospital, London. Subjects— 15 women with sensory urgency, 15 women with idiopathic detrusor instability and 15 without symptoms of frequency or urgency (control group). Interventions— All the women attended for cystometry. Each was asked to complete a visual analogue score of how full she perceived her bladder to be on a scale from 1 to 10. This was done before filling cystometry and at three times during bladder filling. At each time actual filled volume was noted. Main outcome measures— Maximum bladder capacity and individual perception of bladder fullness. Results— Women with sensory urgency and detrusor instability had similar maximum bladder capacity although values in both groups were significantly lower than in the control group; thus percentage of maximum bladder capacity was used for analysis. Linear regression was performed for each group of patients and a predicted visual analogue score at 25, 50 and 75% of capacity calculated. These were compared between groups by rank analysis of variance. There was no significant difference between sensory urgency and detrusor instability. However, at 25, 50 and 75% of capacity, both groups had a significantly higher score than the control group. Conclusions— This abnormal perception would explain symptoms of frequency and urgency in these two groups. These results also confirm the similarity between detrusor instability and sensory urgency.