Analysis of questions by patients with pelvic organ prolapse about vaginal pessaries resulting in a checklist for their physicians.

Objective: International guidelines recommend vaginal pessaries as a first-choice treatment of symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse (POP). Gynecologists rarely receive systematic training or just do not take the time to communicate with their patients. We hypothesized that we could identify key deficits and limitations of counseling before or during pessary therapy from questions directed to manufacturers with the aim to improve and promote health literacy of women with POP.

Methods: We approached five manufacturers to provide anonymized inquiries related to pessary use. After exclusion of duplicates and questions about obstetric pessaries, 174 data sets from 145 patients remained.

Results: In 19/145 patients (13.1%), a 2nd degree, and in 94/145 (64.8%), a 3rd-4th degree of POP was identified. Four patients had additional urinary incontinence. In 32/145 (22.1%), the severity of POP could not be identified. The age of patients ranged from 27 to 98 (mean = 63.7) years. Most inquiries were related to the selected pessary models or sizes (40/174; 22.9%), self-management (20/174; 11.5%), and technical aspects such as shelf life or appropriate cleaning (26/174; 14.9%). Pain or voiding dysfunction was present in 17/174 remarks (9.7%). Lifestyle questions related to the use of pessaries during sport, menstruation, or mechanical anticonception. The cube pessary was in the focus of interest followed by the sieve bowl, urethra, ring, and Gellhorn device. The list of questions was summarized as a checklist stratified according to priorities.

Conclusion: The checklist should help improve counseling and self-management of patients to optimize the benefit/risk ratio of conservative treatment of pelvic floor diseases.