Natural History of Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms Secondary to BPH

In the past, "clinical benign prostatic hyperplasia" was used as a term indicating urinary symptoms accompanied by benign prostatic hyperplasia. However, there were no definitive criteria for this condition. Although we empirically knew that prostate size was associated with lower urinary tract symptoms, urinary flow rate, acute urinary retention, and prostatectomy, there was no definitive evidence about these experiences. To understand this condition with a lack of diagnostic criteria, it is necessary to understand its natural history based on reliable epidemiological data. Community-based and population-based studies are suitable methodologies to investigate this natural history because these studies are more representative of men in general with limited bias. However, there have been only a few community-based studies about lower urinary tract symptoms suggestive of benign prostatic hyperplasia including the prostate volume. The most famous ones were conducted in Olmsted County in the U.S., Shimamaki-mura in Japan and Krimpen in Netherlands. In this article, we mainly review the results from these three cross-sectional and longitudinal community-based studies on BPH and LUTS. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.