Author response to: Comparison of four surgical approaches for rectal prolapse: multicentre randomized clinical trial

Dear Editor

The authors of the Swedish Rectal Prolapse Trial¹ thank Brown and Senapati for their comments on our article. The delayed publication of the results of the trial was due to several unforeseen circumstances. Maybe the results can be regarded redundant but, at least in Sweden, the surgical interventions in this study are still used. However, the delay made it possible to perform a long-term follow-up, which showed that at least 20 per cent of the recurrences occur later than 3 years after operation. The combined data of the present trial and the PROSPER trial show no difference between the methods and confirm how difficult it is to recruit patients for interventional trials in surgery, such as these randomized trials on rectal prolapse. However, both trials contribute to valuable knowledge about improvement in incontinence regardless of which surgical intervention was performed.