A review of prospective Clinical Trials for neurogenic bladder: Pharmaceuticals

INTRODUCTION: The neurogenic urinary bladder is defined as a dysfunctional bladder associated with a known neurological injury. We review the data from good quality clinical trials looking at drug therapy for the neurogenic bladder. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In order to identify as many prospective trials as possible, we performed Internet searches, using the same search string: Urinary Bladder, neurogenic (MESH). In each case, the search was limited to clinical trial, prospective trial, subjects were human and the language was English. There was no year limit for our search. The next step was duplicate removal, which led to a final number of 580 papers. We defined clear inclusion criteria for the papers. RESULTS: A total of 82 full text papers were reviewed and analyzed according to the previously mentioned algorithm. The oldest two prospective clinical trials date back to 1976, with an obvious increase in number of trials each year, reaching more than five trials per year after 2001, which demonstrates increased interest toward the subject. The total number of patients included in the trials is 3904, 888 of which are children. The male: female ratio is close to 1, although there were 9 studies where no information regarding the sex of the patients was available. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis stresses the acute need for good quality trials looking at the drugs used for the management of the patients with neurogenic bladders, with adequate statistical power to support the data they present.