Transanal irrigation to treat refractory constipation: a short-term real-life study

The treatment of patients complaining of chronic constipation is still far from ideal, and there is a discrete percentage of them that are labeled as refractory to the usual therapeutic approaches. In these patients there is often the need to use alternative approaches. Among these, transanal irrigation seems promising. Our aim was to evaluate the effect of transanal irrigation on symptoms and quality of life in patients with severe refractory constipation. To this end, we retrospectively analyzed the charts of 31 such patients undergoing transanal irrigation, and evaluated them basally and one and three months after the treatment. Data were collected by means of the Wexner score and the SF12 questionnaire for quality of life. Overall, there was a significant decrease of the constipation scores and an improvement of quality of life score after treatment, after both one and three months. No important side effects were documented. In conclusion, treatment with transanal irrigation may be useful, alone or as combination therapy, in patients with constipation refractory to the conventional therapeutic approaches, but studies in more numerous cohorts of subjects are needed to firmly validate this approach.