BACKGROUND: Pelvic organ prolapse is common, causes unpleasant symptoms and negatively affects women's quality of life. In the UK, most women with pelvic organ prolapse attend clinics for pessary care.
OBJECTIVES: To determine the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of vaginal pessary self-management on prolapse-specific quality of life for women with prolapse compared with clinic-based care; and to assess intervention acceptability and contextual influences on effectiveness, adherence and fidelity.
DESIGN: A multicentre, parallel-group, superiority randomised controlled trial with a mixed-methods process evaluation.
PARTICIPANTS: Women attending UK NHS outpatient pessary services, aged ≥ 18 years, using a pessary of any type/material (except shelf, Gellhorn or Cube) for at least 2 weeks. Exclusions: women with limited manual dexterity, with cognitive deficit (prohibiting consent or self-management), pregnant or non-English-speaking.
INTERVENTION: The self-management intervention involved a 30-minute teaching appointment, an information leaflet, a 2-week follow-up telephone call and a local clinic telephone helpline number. Clinic-based care involved routine appointments determined by centres' usual practice.
ALLOCATION: Remote web-based application; minimisation was by age, pessary user type and centre.
BLINDING: Participants, those delivering the intervention and researchers were not blinded to group allocation.
OUTCOMES: The patient-reported primary outcome (measured using the Pelvic Floor Impact Questionnaire-7) was prolapse-specific quality of life, and the cost-effectiveness outcome was incremental cost per quality-adjusted life-year (a specifically developed health Resource Use Questionnaire was used) at 18 months post randomisation. Secondary outcome measures included self-efficacy and complications. Process evaluation data were collected by interview, audio-recording and checklist. Analysis was by intention to treat.
RESULTS: Three hundred and forty women were randomised (self-management,= 169; clinic-based care,= 171). At 18 months post randomisation, 291 questionnaires with valid primary outcome data were available (self-management,= 139; clinic-based care,= 152). Baseline economic analysis was based on 264 participants (self-management,= 125; clinic-based care,= 139) with valid quality of life and resource use data. Self-management was an acceptable intervention. There was no group difference in prolapse-specific quality of life at 18 months (adjusted mean difference -0.03, 95% confidence interval -9.32 to 9.25). There was fidelity to intervention delivery. Self-management was cost-effective at a willingness-to-pay threshold of £20,000 per quality-adjusted life-year gained, with an estimated incremental net benefit of £564.32 and an 80.81% probability of cost-effectiveness. At 18 months, more pessary complications were reported in the clinic-based care group (adjusted mean difference 3.83, 95% confidence interval 0.81 to 6.86). There was no group difference in general self-efficacy, but self-managing women were more confident in pessary self-management activities. In both groups, contextual factors impacted on adherence and effectiveness. There were no reported serious unexpected serious adverse reactions. There were 32 serious adverse events (self-management,= 17; clinic-based care,= 14), all unrelated to the intervention. Skew in the baseline data for the Pelvic Floor Impact Questionnaire-7, the influence of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the potential effects of crossover and the lack of ethnic diversity in the recruited sample were possible limitations. n n n n n n n n
CONCLUSIONS: Self-management was acceptable and cost-effective, led to fewer complications and did not improve or worsen quality of life for women with prolapse compared with clinic-based care. Future research is needed to develop a quality-of-life measure that is sensitive to the changes women desire from treatment.
STUDY REGISTRATION: This study is registered as ISRCTN62510577.
FUNDING: This award was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme (NIHR award ref: 16/82/01) and is published in full in; Vol. 28, No. 23. See the NIHR Funding and Awards website for further award information. Health Technology Assessment
