Update from the Endometriosis Centres Chairman

Thank you for your continued support of the Endometriosis Centres Project. 2018 saw the highest number of submitted cases to the database, which is a very positive sign of growing uptake of a governance process for the surgical treatment of women with severe disease. 1762 cases of pararectal space dissection were entered by accredited centres, 236 more than last year. In addition a further 384 cases were submitted by provisional centres bringing the total for 2018 to 2146 (from 1619 last year). The vast amount of data now held on the database continues to make this an extremely attractive source of information for research.

The Scientific Advisory Group published a landmark paper: “Laparoscopic excision of deep rectovaginal endometriosis in BSGE endometriosis centres: a multicentre prospective cohort study” in 2018 and plans are in place for further publication. There is a data sharing agreement policy for those interested in using the database to develop research ideas.

Annual accreditation continues to be a desirable process and continues to set high standards evidencing multispeciality and multidisciplinary involvement. In 2019 as in 2018, a minimum of 12 cases of pararectal dissection with complete pre-operative questionnaire entered per named gynaecological surgeon in each centre is required to maintain accreditation. Each accredited and provisional centre is also required to submit an exemplar video by the end of the year to coincide with the annual data collection and to ensure a CNS job plan has been submitted by the end of December.

I am keen that we continue to be ambitious in our data collection. There are challenges faced by hospital with varying individual and institutional resources to facilitate database entry and monitoring. That being said, I hope that we can further improve the vale of the data, by getting better follow up rates. This ultimately will mean more meaningful results and more relevant information to give clinicians and women contemplating surgery for severe disease.

We have had to come to difficult decisions with respect to the growing interest from overseas hospitals regarding centre accreditation. It is a source of pride that the BSGE is setting standards that international centres wish to adopt. Such has been the popularity of the requests to seek BSGE accreditation, that the Council have inevitably had to carefully consider its role in the accreditation of overseas centres. It was the unanimous decision of the committee and BSGE Council, that the BSGE would suspend the accreditation of overseas centres. This means that 2019 will be the last year they will appear on the list of provisional / full accredited BSGE centres.

I am grateful to my subcommittee members, Tom Aust, Dominic Byrne, Justin Clark and Tom Smith-Walker for their support, to our IT team, Presidential guidance from Sanjay Vyas and most of all Atia Khan who tirelessly works in the face of much adversity to keep the database, the committee and me inline.

I look forward to updating you in the New Year with data from 2019 and thank you for your ongoing interest and support.

Arvind Vashisht

Chair BSGE Endometriosis Centres subcommittee