OC-066 A National Survey of the Practice and Attitudes Towards Investigations and Biofeedback Therapy for Anorectal Disorders
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction Recent international consensus guidelines on anorectal disorders from the Neurogastroenterology and Motility societies (ANMS-ESNM) recommend biofeedback therapy (BFT) for constipation with dyssynergic defecation (DD) and for faecal incontinence (FI).1 We conducted a national survey to understand the current practice and opinions on anorectal function tests and BFT in the UK & Ireland. Methods An online survey was developed by a multi-disciplinary panel with medical, surgical and GI physiology representation. All GI clinicians and physiologists/scientists in the UK & Ireland were invited to take the survey through their national societies BSG, AGIP, AUGIS and ACPGBI. All respondents were asked about their views on anorectal function tests and BFT, whilst GI physiologists and lead clinicians regularly involved in these studies were asked specific questions relating to their clinical practice. Results 313 responses (59% Gastroenterologists) included representatives from 98 GI physiology units. Of the units surveyed, 74% have anorectal manometry (ARM) (High Resolution 35%), 59% offer BFT and most have access to other imaging modalities (endoanal ultrasound 64%, colonic transit studies 86% and defecating proctography 67%). Overall, the majority agreed that anorectal function tests are useful in managing chronic functional constipation (FC) (69%) and FI (76%). In FI, 61% found BFT helpful, whereas opinions were divided in constipation with 52% finding BFT helpful for all forms of FC and 47% indicating BFT is only helpful in the DD sub-group. Surprisingly, a high proportion of respondents ‘did not know’ how useful anorectal function tests (FC 22% and FI 21%) and BFT (FC 26%, DD 33%, FI 31%) were. Responses from GI physiologists/lead clinicians (n = 95) indicated that; 58% have separate rooms for lower GI studies and the numbers of ARMs performed/month in their units (where known) were; none in 20%, 1–20 cases in 37% and >20/month in 28% and similarly numbers of BFTs/month for DD, FC or FI were; none in 37%, 1–20 cases in 21%, >20 in 18%. Only half the GI physiologists/lead clinicians surveyed offer BFT (FI 52%, DD 53% and FC 47%). Conclusion Whilst anorectal function tests are available in most units, BFT appears to be limited to specialist centres, with the majority agreeing that these interventions are useful in managing FC, DD and in particular FI. Up to a third were unsure about the utility of tests and BFT suggesting a worrying lack of knowledge and exposure amongst non-specialists which could affect the management of patients with these common anorectal disorders. Reference 1 Rao S, et al. NMO 2015;27(5):594–609. Disclosure of Interest None Declared
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".