Systematic Review of Reported Outcomes for Antegrade Continence Enema in Patients With Anorectal Malformation and Hirschsprung Disease.

AIM: To identify reported parameters and study characteristics in the literature on antegrade continence enema (ACE) in patients with anorectal malformations (ARM) and Hirschsprung disease (HD).

METHODS

Following PRISMA guidelines, we performed a search using the terms "anorectal malformation" or "Hirschsprung disease", combined with "appendicostomy," "antegrade continence enema," "ACE", "Malone", or "cecostomy" in the databases Ovid MEDLINE, Cochrane Central, Embase, and CINAHL. Two reviewers independently screened and extracted data. Exclusion criteria included <10 patients with ARM and/or HD, age at ACE >18 years, non-English papers, opinion articles, conference abstracts, reviews, and meta-analyses.

RESULTS

257 papers were identified, and 48 met the inclusion criteria. 76 % were retrospective studies and 9 % multi-center studies. Most studies (84 %) mixed three or more diagnoses, with a median of 16 ARM and 3 HD patients per study. A total of 301 different parameters were identified. Nine (3 %) parameters were mentioned in more than 50 % of the publications. The most frequent baseline parameters were sex (98 %) and age at surgery (88 %). Common outcome parameters included success of enema (92 %), complication rate (80 %) and revision surgery (79 %). Patient reported outcome measures were utilized in 12 (25 %) papers, and 3 (6 %) assessed quality of life.

CONCLUSION

There is substantial heterogeneity when reporting ACE outcomes. The use of validated questionnaires and PROMs is rare.