Determinants of women's preferences for surgical versus conservative management for pelvic organ prolapse: a survey-based study from Italy

Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) affects 40% of women, with a 12%-19% lifetime surgical risk. Italy showed high practice variation in POP surgery, possibly impacting equity of access to healthcare services, a central goal of Beveridge-like health systems. According to the literature, unwarranted variation, influenced by physician attitudes or resource allocation, must be reduced. We aimed to identify determinants influencing women's choice when asked whether they prefer surgical or conservative POP management.

In this nationwide prospective study, we distributed a Qualtrics questionnaire via social media to any Italian women over 18 years old who voluntarily decided to participate in the survey.

A grade 3 POP scenario was presented. Women were asked how likely they would have surgery. Each woman randomly received only 1 question out of 11: 1 question was the reference question ('How likely would you have surgery?') while 10 questions contained a potential determinant influencing woman's choice ('How likely would you have surgery if…?').

The outcome was the chance of choosing surgery expressed as a percentage. We analysed the effect of each factor on the outcome by using adjusted beta regression models.

Respondents (n=222) opted for surgery with a median probability of 61.5%. Factors significantly increasing the chance of choosing surgery were advice from physicians, the presence of a trusted physician during hospitalisation, surgical approach with low complication rates, uterine-sparing surgery, the absence of postoperative abdominal scars and nearby hospital.

Our findings provide health managers and policy-makers with new evidence to better understand women's decision-making and partly capture the determinants of unwarranted variation. These inputs may also be used as attributes for a future discrete choice experiment.