Therapeutic outcome and quality of life between urethral and detrusor botulinum toxin treatment for patients with spinal cord lesions and detrusor sphincter dyssynergia

AimsPatients with spinal cord lesions and detrusor sphincter dyssynergia (DSD) may be treated with urethral sphincter botulinum toxin A (BoNT-A) injection for difficult urination or detrusor BoNT-A injection for incontinence. Although objective data showed improvement, patients might not be satisfied with the result especially in quality of life (QOL) issue. This study investigated the therapeutic results and QOL and patients' satisfaction to these two treatments. Patients and methodsPatients with spinal cord lesion and DSD were treated with urethral sphincter injection of 100U of BoNT-A for main symptoms of difficult urination and detrusor injection of 200U of BoNT-A for main symptom of incontinence. The urodynamic parameters, QOL scores using UDI-6 and IIIQ-7 and general satisfaction were compared between two groups. ResultsThe overall satisfactory result was perceived in 60.6% and 77.3% in patients who received urethral and detrusor BoNT-A injection, respectively. Urodynamic parameters showed significant improvement in both groups. Urethral injection group had improvement in IIQ-7, but not in UDI-6 scores whereas detrusor injection group had improvement in all scores. The improvement of UDI-6 and IIQ-7 was significantly greater in detrusor than urethral injection group. Increase in incontinence grade was the major cause of dissatisfaction in urethral injection group, whereas increase in difficult urination and needing catheterisation were the main dissatisfaction causes in detrusor injection group. ConclusionThere was discrepancy between the objective urodynamic results and patient satisfaction in treatment of DSD by BoNT-A injection. Patients with DSD and treated with detrusor BoNT-A had greater QOL improvement than those treated with urethral injection.