Recommendations for evaluation of neurogenic bladder and bowel dysfunction after spinal cord injury and/or disease

Advancing best practices for managing neurogenic bladder and bowel (NBB) issues has been slow due to a lack of standardized evaluation methods. The recommendations in this manuscript address this issue and evolved from a series of collaborative, community-based meetings with spinal cord injury/disease (SCI/D) stakeholders. This working group aimed to identify and evaluate clinical measures and datasets used for NBB in SCI/D, recommending a minimum set of self-reported measures (SRMs) for interventional studies.

• 1
  The study identified 15 clinical assessment modalities for neurogenic bladder and 12 for neurogenic bowel in SCI/D.
• 2
  Following a two-phase evaluation, eight SRMs were selected for final review with the Qualiveen and Short-Form (SF) Qualiveen and the Neurogenic Bowel Dysfunction Score (NBDS) being recommended as supplemental, highly-recommended due to their strong psychometrics and extensive use in SCI/D.
• 3
  Two datasets and other SRM measures were recommended as supplemental.