Male Stress Incontinence Grading Scale (MSIGS) for Evaluation of Men with Post-Prostatectomy Incontinence: A Pilot Study.

Introduction: We developed an objective clinical grading scale to characterize post-prostatectomy incontinence (PPI) and evaluated its use as a tool to facilitate male anti-incontinence procedure selection.

Protocol: Between September 2014 and July 2015, we prospectively implemented a novel Male Stress Incontinence Grading Scale (MSIGS) to stratify PPI patients based on incontinence severity. Patients included were those referred for PPI who had no prior anti-incontinence surgery. During the initial outpatient consultation, each patient was prospectively assigned an incontinence grade score of 0 through 4 based on the consensus of 2 examiners performing a standing cough test (SCT). All patients refrained from voiding for at least 60 minutes prior to the SCT. Men with mild SUI (MSIGS grades 0-2) were offered AdVance sling surgery while those with heavier SUI (MSIGS grades 3-4) were offered artificial urinary sphincter (AUS). MSIGS grade was correlated to patient-reported pads-per-day (PPD), and patient-reported outcomes of anti-incontinence surgery were assessed.

Outcome: Of 62 consecutive new PPI patients, 20 were graded as mild based on SCT [five (8%) grade 0, 10 (16%) grade 1, five (8%) grade 2] while 42 were graded as moderate-severe [10 (16%) grade 3, 32 (52%) grade 4]. MSIGS grade demonstrated a strong correlation with preoperative PPD (r=0.74). Among the 53 patients who underwent surgical intervention for PPI, 14 with mild SUI were treated with AdVance® male urethral sling (MSIGS grade 0, 1, or 2) while 39 more severe cases received AUS (MSIGS grade 3 or 4). Patient-reported improvement was high overall (median 95%) and similar for sling and AUS patients (95% and 96.5% respectively, p=0.596). The median time from radical prostatectomy to anti-incontinence surgery was 5.4 years (range 1-20).

Discussion: The Male Stress Incontinence Grading Scale provides a rapid, simple, non-invasive, objective assessment of PPI severity which strongly correlates with patient-reported pads-per-day and appears to facilitate anti-incontinence surgical procedure selection.