OBJECTIVES:The International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS), a condition-specific questionnaire originally addressed to men, comprises seven items investigating symptoms (summed into a total score), plus 1 item on quality of life (QoL). The IPSS was translated into Italian and adapted to women. The so-obtained W-IPSS was thus validated by the FLOW study group in a sample of Italian women with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS).METHODS: The validation process consisted of forward and backward translation, test of comprehension, discriminant validity and test-retest reliability. A first set of women was interviewed after filling-in the questionnaire and a comprehension rate was built as the percentage of correctly understood questions and pre-coded answers. A case-control study was then performed. Women aged °Ý 18 year affected by LUTS for at least three months and with negative dipstick were consecutively enrolled as cases. Controls were defined as healthy women of comparable age.In order to evaluate reliability, cases were retested after seven days from baseline and a correlation analysis was performed (Pearson's r). Discriminant validity was assessed by comparing the scores of cases and controls with ANOVA.RESULTS: During the translation process the QoL question about "prostate symptoms" was changed into "urinary symptoms" to adapt the IPSS to a female population (now "W-IPSS"). The comprehension rate obtained on 15 women was 86%. Eighty cases and 80 controls were then enrolled at baseline. All cases were eligible for the test-retest. Pearson's coefficient between ratings was 0.81 for the symptom score and 0.89 for QoL. Cases and controls were discriminated by ANOVA (p<0.001) for all items. CONCLUSION: Women-IPSS shows overall a satisfactory comprehension rate, a good test-retest reliability and high discriminant validity.