Is Colpocleisis good enough? A single-centre audit of outcome spanning 11 years.

Objective: Colpocleisis is an obliterative vaginal surgery for treating Stage 3 and 4 pelvic organ prolapse. We reviewed colpocleisis’ performed in our unit looking at subjective and objective outcomes, including global improvement of symptoms and patient satisfaction, and peri-operative complications and recurrence.
Design: A prospective audit of 28 patients who underwent colpocleisis between 2011 and 2022. Women completed the ICIQ-UI and ICIQ-VS questionnaires pre-operatively, and then again at 6 months post operatively along with an additional post-op questionnaire. Follow up of women was undertaken by a Specialist Urogynaecology Nurse in Nurse Led clinic.
Methods: Data was collected from the Unit’s BSUG database as well as the patients’ medical records.  
Results: The mean age was 81 years (±6.9 years). The mean parity was 2. Five women had previous vault suspension procedures (2 sacrocolpopexy, 2 sacrospinous fixation and one high uterosacral suspension). With regards to the surgery- 12 women had the uterus preserved, 15 were post-hysterectomy and 1 had hysterectomy at the time. Average hospital stay was 1.5 days. The mean follow-up period was 6.5 months. Half of the patients (14) were reviewed at a face-to-face appointment, 13 via telephone and 1 by postal questionnaire. A global impression of ‘very much better’ was reported by 27 patients (96.4%) and 1 woman did not respond. There were no intra-operative complications. One patient was readmitted to the hospital with a small pelvic abscess 2 weeks after the surgery and treated successfully with intravenous antibiotics.

 Conclusion: Colpocleisis is a procedure characterised by good outcomes of a high objective success rate with an improvement of quality of life. At our centre, the outcomes of colpocleisis surgeries were comparable with those in other single centres published- with significantly lower complication rates.