Drug Class Review on Urinary Incontinence Drugs

s: Assessment of Publication Bias In addition to the fully-published reports of head-to-head trials cited above, we found three studies that were published in abstract format only, at the time of writing (see Table 7). Two of these may be interim analyses of included studies, and do not present enough data to compare to published studies. 58 One study appears to be independent of the included studies. The study compared tolterodine 2mg twice daily to oxybutynin 5mg three times daily for 12 weeks. The mean change in number of micturations/24h was –2.1 for tolterodine and –2.7 for oxybutynin. The mean change in number of incontinence episodes/24h was –1.7 for tolterodine and –2.1 for oxybutynin. There was no significant difference between groups on either measure or on patients’ perception of bladder condition using a 6-point scale. These numbers are within the ranges reported in the head to head trials, and do not indicate a publication bias based on effect size. One study of a urinary anticholinergic agent compared to another drug, and four placebo-controlled trials published in abstract form were also found. The results are comparable to results of fully-published articles and are summarized in Table 7. 2. For adult patients with urinary urge incontinence/overactive bladder, do anticholinergic incontinence drugs differ in safety or adverse effects? There are no long-term head-to-head studies designed to assess adverse events of the urinary anticholinergic incontinence drugs. No long-term studies of adverse effects of flavoxate were found. We found one study of prescription claims data that evaluated the discontinuation rate of new prescriptions for tolterodine or oxybutynin (see Table 8). This study evaluated the proportion of patients discontinuing treatment (not refilling