The Readability of British Association of Urology Society Patient Information Leaflets: Have We Done Enough for Patients to Understand?

Introduction Patient Information leaflets (PILs) from the British Association of Urologists (BAUS) are commonly used to communicate to patients about surgical procedures, but previous studies have highlighted that they are too difficult for some patients to read. BAUS PILs have since been rewritten using guidelines which emphasize readability. Objectives To identify if the readability of BAUS PILs has changed compared to historical versions. Methods Current BAUS PILs (published 2020-2025) were compared with historical PILs with similar titles from 2014 to 2016 using a custom Python script. Results Readability scores improved by a significant ( P < .001) albeit small amount (FKGL 8.83 vs 8.67; SMOG 11.86 vs 11.71; FRE 57.06 vs 57.47), and continue to have a suboptimal readability. The revised PILs had significantly fewer long sentences (10.11% vs 6.84% P < .0001), fewer sentences that used the “passive voice” (30.50% vs 16.22% P < .0001) and were shorter (1875.5 words vs 1726 P = .004). Conclusion While there have been small improvements in urology PILs for patients, they remain too difficult for many patients, and more work is needed to improve readability.