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WELCOME TO THE FUTURE STUDY

Female Urgency, Trial of Urodynamics as Routine Evaluation; a superiority randomised clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of invasive urodynamic investigations in management of women with refractory overactive bladder symptoms

What is FUTURE?

FUTURE is a research study looking at how useful a special bladder test called ‘Urodynamics’ is at improving the treatment results for women affected by refractory overactive bladder (OAB).

OAB affects 12-14% (12 in every 100 women) of the adult female population in the UK. Symptoms include increased frequency (going to pass urine more frequently); urgency (being unable to hold-on); urgency incontinence (Urinary Leakage being unable to hold-on); and waking up at night to pass urine.

Although rarely life-threatening, OAB can have a considerable negative impact on patients’ quality of life, restricting their social life and ability to work, and up-to social isolation in severe cases.


OAB is first treated with lifestyle changes (such as reducing caffeine intake); pelvic floor exercises; bladder training and certain medications. Unfortunately these treatments do not work in 25-40% of patients (i.e. refractory OAB). These patients may be offered second line treatments such as injections of BOTOX into the bladder wall or sacral nerve modulation/ stimulation (an implant in the buttock which aim to regulate the bladder nerves in the lower spine).

Before recommending second line treatments, doctors are advised to perform a diagnostic invasive test called “Urodynamics” to confirm the diagnosis. The test involves passing a thin tube into the bladder and another one into the back passage to measure the bladder activity and episodes of urinary incontinence (UI).

Patients often find Urodynamics embarrassing and uncomfortable and some get cystitis after the test. When asked, patients felt the test could be justified if it improves the treatment outcomes. However, in almost 40% of patients, Urodynamics does not show the underlying cause of the bladder problem and therefore is unable to guide doctors and patients in their decision making.

The FUTURE study therefore aims to assess whether routinely performing Urodynamics, in addition to the standard comprehensive clinical assessment, improves the outcome of treatments in women with refractory OAB compared to comprehensive clinical assessment only. We also want to assess whether doing the test on everybody makes the best use of NHS resources.

The FUTURE study is funded by the National Institute for HEALTH and Care Research HTA programme.
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Study update

Recruitment to the study has now closed and longer-term follow-up is ongoing.

The women who took part in the FUTURE study and consented to being contacted about the longer-term follow-up study will be invited to take part. They will be asked to complete one additional questionnaire at approx. 5- years post-randomisation. Information on further treatments will also be collected from NHS central registers.

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General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Participant Information

University of Aberdeen/NHS Grampian is the sponsor for this study based in the United Kingdom. For the longer-term follow-up study, the University of Aberdeen will be using information from you and your medical records in order to undertake this study and will act as the data controller for this study. This means that we are responsible for looking after your information and using it properly. The University of Aberdeen will keep identifiable information about you for up to 10 years after the study has finished.

Your rights to access, change or move your information are limited, as we need to manage your information in specific ways in order for the research to be reliable and accurate. If you withdraw from the study, we will keep the information about you that we have already obtained. To safeguard your rights, we will use the minimum personally-identifiable information possible.

You can find out more about how we use your information here: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/about/privacy/research-participants-938.php or by contacting the Data Protection office at dpa@abdn.ac.uk