Cunningham, Andrew R.Gu, LinDubinskaya, AlexandraDe Hoedt, Amanda M.Barbour, Kamil E.Kim, JayoungFreedland, Stephen J.Anger, Jennifer T.2023-11-302023-11-302023-05-25Cunningham AR, Gu L, Dubinskaya A, De Hoedt AM, Barbour KE, Kim J, Freedland SJ and Anger JT (2023) Quality-of-life impact of interstitial cystitis and other pelvic pain syndromes. Front. Pain Res. 4:1149783. doi: 10.3389/fpain.2023.1149783http://hdl.handle.net/10342/13209Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY)Objective: To compare health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and pelvic pain levels over time in patients with interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS) and those with other pelvic pain conditions (OPPC) including chronic prostatitis, dyspareunia, vaginismus, vulvodynia, and vulvar vestibulitis. Methods: We prospectively enrolled male and female patients from any Veterans Health Administration (VHA) center in the US. They completed the Genitourinary Pain Index (GUPI) quantifying urologic HRQOL and the 12-Item Short Form Survey version 2 (SF-12) quantifying general HRQOL at enrollment and 1 year later. Participants were classified by ICD diagnosis codes and confirmed by chart review to be IC/BPS or OPPC (308 and 85 patients respectively). Results: At baseline and follow-up, IC/BPS patients, on average, had worse urologic and general HRQOL than OPPC patients. IC/BPS patients demonstrated improvement in urologic HRQOL measures over the study but demonstrated no significant change in any general HRQOL measure suggesting a condition-specific impact. Patients with OPPC demonstrated similar improvements in urologic HRQOL but had deteriorating mental health and general HRQOL at follow-up suggesting a wider general HRQOL impact for these diseases. Conclusions: We found that patients with IC/BPS had worse urologic HRQOL compared to other pelvic conditions. Despite this, IC/BPS showed stable general HRQOL over time, suggesting a more condition-specific impact on HRQOL. OPPC patients showed deteriorating general HRQOL, suggesting more widespread pain symptoms in these conditions.intersticial cystitisbladder pain syndromeIC/BPSpelvic painveteransArticle10.3389/fpain.2023.1149783