Prevalence and Characteristics of Prostatism in Korea: Application of I-PSS / 대한비뇨기과학회지

ABSTRACT

Recently the use of I-PSS (International prostate symptom score) is highly recommended for the evaluation of symptomatic benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and many linguistic translations have been made. Regardless the validity and reliability of linguistic translation, there might be several social and cultural factors which affect to the symptom severity in BPH. We tried to show the prevalence of prostatism and the effect of social and cultural background which could affect to the results I-PSS questionnaire in Korea. A total of 841 men (40~79 years) who visited 4 health care center were included. Because of 107 men had medico-surgical history relating to voiding, final eligible subjects were 734. Total symptom scores increased by age decades (40~49, 50~59, 60~ 69, 70~79; median 7, 8, 11, 12 respectively). The rate of mild (0~7); moderate (8~19); and severe (20~35) symptom in 40th, 50th, 60th and 70th were 55.5%; 39.3%; 1.2%, 45.4%; 46.5%; 8.1%, 30.4%; 53.9%; 15.7% and 28.1%; 43.8%; 28.1% respectively. One cause of these high prevalence of prostatism in Korea is relatively very small proportion of readily treated BPH patients in general population (0.5%). Another factor of the high prevalence of prostatism is thought to be the different social and cultural concept to voiding status. These factors limit comparability of I-PSS questionnaire between different countries.