POUCH-UK

Pharyngeal Pouch Outcomes in the United Kingdom: Current Healthcare Practice Audit

Background

Pharyngeal pouch (Zenker diverticulum) is an outpouching of the pharyngeal mucosa that commonly presents with dysphagia, regurgitation, aspiration and weight loss, particularly in older adults. Although uncommon, it is an important and treatable cause of dysphagia.

While surgery is considered the definitive treatment for symptomatic pharyngeal pouch, multiple surgical techniques are currently in use, and evidence-based consensus on the optimal treatment modality is yet to be established. Furthermore, there is limited information on how patients are managed across the UK, how well they recover following treatment, and how care varies between hospitals. This makes it difficult to determine which treatment strategies provide the best outcomes or how services could be improved for patients.

Aims

The POUCH-UK project aims to:

• Describe the current UK landscape of pharyngeal pouch management
• Characterise referral pathways for pharyngeal pouch patients
• Evaluate variation in surgical techniques used across centres
• Compare treatment outcomes including complications and recurrence rates
• Assess management strategies for recurrent pharyngeal pouch
• Explore trends in practice over time and between geographical regions
• Identify outcome measures currently used to evaluate treatment success

Strategy

POUCH-UK is a national, multicentre, retrospective audit evaluating patients diagnosed with pharyngeal pouch in the United Kingdom. We are recruiting site leads and collaborators from ENT and Gastroenterology departments to help with the data collection for this project.

Study setting: We are accepting data from sites across the United Kingdom.

Retrospective data collection will take place across participating centres following local site initiation: 

• Site registration is available from 25/03/2026
• Participating centres will identify patients diagnosed with pharyngeal pouch between 1^st January 2015 – 31^st December 2025
• Data submission deadline will be 31/07/2026

Recognition

All site leads, collaborators and supervising consultants from sites that complete the data collection will be acknowledged as a PubMed citable collaborative author in all publications arising from the collected data.

For anyone wishing to apply for ENT ST3, this contribution to a collaborative project will score you points on your application.

Key Dates

Site lead and collaborators recruitment: Now open

Site/Data collection opens: 25/03/2026

Data collection closes: 31/07/2026

CHECKLIST

• Register your site by completing the Study Registration Form (see below)
• Local audit approval
  • Register the audit with your local audit department/governance team
  • The study protocol and audit registration letter template will support this process. These are available below
• Identify your patients
• Collect your data
  • Use the standardised data collection tool provided (see below)
  • Record patient demographics, referral pathways, investigations performed, pouch characteristics, treatment modality, post-operative care and complications, recurrence and treatment outcomes
• Data handling
  • Retain a secure local copy of your dataset
  • Pseudonymise data before submission by deleting the hospital number and retaining only the case number  
  • No identifiable patient data should be shared outside the local site
• Submit the anonymised dataset using the template to pouch@entintegrate.co.uk by 31/07/2026 

Key Documents

• Study registration form
• Study Protocol
• Audit Registration Letter Template
• Standardised Data Collection Tool

Contact Us:

If you want further information, please feel free to contact us at pouch@entintegrate.co.uk