To the editor

摘要

In this interesting article the authors identified predictors of post-radical prostatectomy (RP) urinary incontinence recovery using trajectory based cluster analysis. They revealed that patient age and number of comorbidities predicted worse outcome. With regard to this issue, unfortunately they missed our ?study published in 2008.x We conducted a cross-cultural comparison of post-RP urinary outcome using the validated University of California, Los Angeles Prostate Cancer Index and found that in addition to age, ethnicity, baseline urinary function and comorbidity count were independent predictors of post-prostatectomy urinary function. The metabolic syndrome, the most common comorbidity of elderly men, has been shown to be associated with benign prostatic hyperplasia and lower urinary tract symptoms.2 On the other hand, the time course after RP represents the natural history of lower urinary tract symptoms in the absence of a prostate.3 Thus, it is conceivable that patients with more medical comorbidities are at higher risk for adverse urinary function outcome. Identifying patients at high risk for adverse urinary function outcome is pivotal and facilitates medical decision making