[The effect of subjective urinary symptoms on quality of life (QOL)--results of a field survey for prostatic diseases].

: We investigated the effect of subjective urinary symptoms on quality of life (QOL) in 536 males who participated in a field survey for prostatic diseases in Hokkaido from 1991 to 1993. To quantitatively estimate the subjective urinary symptoms, we used a questionnaire that included questions about irritative symptoms such as "diurnal frequency", "nocturia", "sensation of residual urine", "urgency" and "frequent urination within 2 hrs.", and obstructive symptoms such as "difficulty to start urination", "intermittency during urination", "strain or pushing", "weak stream" and "stopping or starting urination". The incidences of participants with poor QOL increased as irritative and obstructive symptoms became apparent (p < 0.001). However, some participants, who had only mild urinary symptoms, could not tolerate the situation and felt impairment of QOL. In contrast, others did not feel a decrease of QOL in daily life in spite of severe symptoms. Thus, subjective urinary symptoms did not always correlate with QOL in some individuals. These results indicated that we should keep in mind not only subjective urinary symptoms but their effect on QOL whenever we determine an indication for medical or surgical intervention for patients having urinary symptoms.