Introduction Little is known about VC in Ethiopia. Our aim was to describe demographic and clinical characteristics of VC patients treated at TASH.

Methods This is a retrospective study. A structured questionnaire was used to gather data about patients with histologically-confirmed primary VC seen at TASH from 8/30/2012 to 8/30/2017.Data was analyzed using SPSS software.

Results There were a total of 118 patients. The median/mean age was 39/43.17years. Patients presented with more than one symptom, including mass (76%) and ulcer (48%), with a mean duration of 2 years. In 80% of patients, VC extended to adjacent organs including vagina (47%), anus (30%), urethra (23%) and inguinal lymph nodes (46%). 66% of women were HIV-positive with a mean infection time of 72 months and all were taking HAART. 64% of HIV-positive patients had locally-advanced disease. Patients were treated with chemo-radiation (32%), surgery (17%), surgery with adjuvant radiation (2%) and radiation alone (14%). Surgery was simple vulvectomy and bilateral inguinal LND (10%), radical vulvectomy and bilateral inguinal LND (8%) and simple vulvectomy(5%). Five of 22 developed complications including wound infection (2), vaginal stenosis (2) and wound breakdown with delayed healing, lymphocyst and altered skin pigmentation (1).

Conclusion VC at TASH is a burden of mainly young and HIV-positive patients with late-stage disease despite receiving active HIV health-care and long-standing symptoms. Delivering education about VC to patients, particularly HIV-positive ones, and to HCPs may ameliorate the disease burden in Ethiopia. HPV serotype study and vaccination could also impact the reduction of VC.