Comparative evaluation of the use of water-filled and air-charged catheters during urodynamic studies in women with stress urinary incontinence.

Introduction. Urodynamic studies play an important role in urological and gynecological clinical practice. Specialized catheters used to measure pressures inside and outside the bladder play an important role in this process. International Continence Society (ICS) standards recommend the use of water-filled catheters with external transducers for complex urodynamic studies, which ensures standardization and comparability of results between different clinicsand patients. In recent years, interest in air-charged catheters has increased as a potential alternative to traditional water-perfusion catheters catheters, supposedly reducing artifacts and improving measurement accuracy. Purpose. To conduct a comparative analysis of the data obtained during urodynamic study with the simultaneous use of air-charged and water-filled catheters in women with stress urinary incontinence. Materials and methods. A prospective comparative study of catheters for urodynamics in 41 patients with stress urinary incontinence who underwent surgical treatment at the Botkin Hospital. Air-charged and water-filled catheters were used and installed according to ICS standards. The study was performed using two urodynamic units: Duet Clinic (Mediwatch UK Ltd., Great Britain) for air-charged catheters and Dynamic Proxima (Medetron s.r.o., Czech Republic) for water-filled catheters. When comparing quantitative characteristics of two independent groups with a non-normal distribution, the Mann-Whitney U test was used, with a normal distribution – the Student test. Results. Among the main findings, air-charged catheters showed significant differences in cough pressure and Valsalva test measurements compared with water-filled catheters (p<0.05). However, differences in intravesical and abdominal pressure measurements did not reach statistical significance. Conclusion. The results of our study show that the data obtained using two types of sensors when conducting a complex urodynamic study are not completely comparable. To accurately measure bladder pressure, the use of water perfusion sensors is recommended.