BMJ 1995;310:802 (25 March)

Letters

Do women overreport nocturia?

EDITOR,--S B Pinion and colleagues found similar results in their trial of hysterectomy versus two "conservative" surgical treatments for dysfunctional uterine bleeding, with 95% and 90% of women respectively reporting an acceptable improvement in symptoms after 12 months.1 Both groups, however, reported a significant increase in urinary symptoms one year after the procedure. The authors state, in a footnote to the table that give these results, that "women tended to overreport nocturia in self report questionnaires." According to the methods section of the paper, both preoperative and postoperative symptoms were ascertained by self report questionnaire. Do the authors suggest that differential reporting occurred at these times? On what evidence do they base their assertion that women overreport nocturia? "Overreporting" implies reporting more symptoms than are present, presumably as measured by some external and objective criteria, yet the Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary defines a symptom as "an indication of disease or . . . [Full text of this article]


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