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- For Pain Patients and Professionals
Most studies on interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome and chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome use typical or average levels of pelvic pain or urologic symptom intensity as their outcome, as both are associated with reduced quality of life (QOL). Symptom exacerbations or "flares" have also been found to be associated with reduced QOL, but no studies, to our knowledge, have investigated whether these associations are independent of typical pelvic pain levels and thus might be useful additional outcome measures (or stated differently, whether reducing flare frequency even without reducing mean pain intensity may be important to patients).