Tab. I.

Definitions [9]

Overactive bladder	is a clinical diagnosis characterized by the presence of bothersome urinary symptoms. The International Continence Society defines overactive bladder as the presence of “urinary urgency, usually accompanied by frequency and nocturia, with or without urgency urinary incontinence, in the absence of urinary tract infections or other obvious pathology”. Therefore, overactive bladder symptoms consist of four components: urgency, frequency, nocturia and urgency incontinence.
Urgency	is defined by the International Continence Society as the “complaint of a sudden, compelling desire to pass urine which is difficult to defer”. Urgency is considered the hallmark symptom of overactive bladder, but it has proven difficult to be precisely defined or to characterized for research or clinical purposes.
Urinary frequency	can be reliably measured with a voiding diary. Traditionally, up to seven micturition episodes during waking hours has been considered normal, but this number is highly variable based upon hours of sleep, fluid intake, comorbid medical conditions and other factors.
Nocturia	is the complaint of interruption of sleep one or more times because of the need to void. Three or more episodes of nocturia constitutes moderate or major bother. Like daytime frequency, nocturia is a multifactorial symptom which is often due to factors unrelated to overactive bladder (e.g. excessive nighttime urine production, sleep apnea).
Urgency urinary incontinence	is defined as the involuntary leakage of urine, associated with a sudden compelling desire to void. Incontinence episodes can be measured reliably with a diary, and the quantity of urine leakage can be measured with pad tests. However, in patients with mixed urinary incontinence (both stress and urgency incontinence), it can be difficult to distinguish between incontinence subtypes. Therefore, it is common for overactive bladder treatment trials to utilize total incontinence episodes as an outcome measure.