Poster Presentation Women's Health Forum 2021

Exploring current challenges and strategies in the management, diagnosis and care for Recurrent Vulvovaginal Candidiasis (RVVC) (#73)

Moira Bradfield Strydom 1 , Ramesh L Walpola 2 , Sara McMillan 1 , Robert Ware 1 , Sohil Khan 1 , Evelin Tiralongo 1
  1. Griffith University, Southport, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia
  2. School of Population Health, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Recurrent Vulvovaginal Candidiasis (RVVC) is a subtype of Vulvovaginal Candidiasis that affects up to 10% of Australian women and has debilitating effects on their physical and emotional wellbeing.1 Current evidence supports the induction and maintenance approach although this long term treatment regime for RVVC is not particularly effective with post-treatment relapse rates as high as 57%.2 An Australian survey of vulval health clinicians identified that a multitude of RVVC management protocols are being utilised in clinical practice nationally,3 and a recent narrative review by our team identified a wide variety of treatment strategies in Australasian RVVC prescribing resources and guidelines.Studies assessing the Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) of individuals with RVVC have demonstrated that subjective health status and HRQoL is diminished not only during acute symptom episodes (flare-ups), but also outside of these flare-ups. 1,5 This reduction in HRQoL includes those patients who have received long term maintenance therapy for RVVC.5 The current research will inform patient driven semi-structured interviews. The semi-structured interviews will cover key aspects of RVVC patient experience, comprising of patient knowledge of medical and self-management options, awareness and utilisation of available support services and lifestyle adaptation. Findings from the interviews will be presented and will provide relevance of Patient Orientated Evidence that Matters (POEMS) in designing outcome measures for future clinical trials and qualitative research. Through this research we aim to provide recommendations that could help address inconsistency in design of clinical studies for RVVC management.

  1. Denning DW, Kneale M, Sobel JD, Rautemaa-Richardson R. Global burden of recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis: a systematic review. Lancet Infect Dis. 2018;18:e339-e347.
  2. Sobel JD. Recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis. Am J Obstet Gyneco. 2016;214:15-21.
  3. Watson C, Pirotta M. Recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis: current management. Aust Fam Physician. 2011;40:149.
  4. Bradfield Strydom M, Walpola RL, Khan S, Ware R, Tiralongo E. Evidence-based update on Australasian Pharmaceutical prescribing approaches for Recurrent Vulvovaginal Candidiasis. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstertrics and Gynaecology. 2021;Accepted for publication 26/4/21.
  5. Aballéa S, Guelfucci F, Wagner J, et al. Subjective health status and health-related quality of life among women with Recurrent Vulvovaginal Candidosis (RVVC) in Europe and the USA. Health and quality of life outcomes. 2013;11:169.