I have a chronic anal fissure, do I need surgery for sure?
Not always, but anal fissures are very resistant to medical treatment. First of all, the patient must be diagnosed by a specialist (as they are often mistaken for hemorrhoids); secondly, they must have been properly treated (hemorrhoid ointments do not work). If the fissure still does not remit, my advice would be to operate.
The risk of this surgery is not incontinence, but infection of the surgical wound. Bearing in mind that the fissure is also a wound, if the patient resists the operation and allows a long time to pass, apart from the suffering it may cause him/her, he/she is exposed to developing an abscess/fistula of the anus due to infection of the fissure.
Anal fissure operation, can I become incontinent?
NO. But it is very important to be operated by a recognized specialist in proctology. Patients with fissure have an excess of muscle tone in the internal anal sphincter; the surgery consists in making a minimal incision to one of the two anal sphincters to recover the normal muscular tone as well as the decrease in anal diameter they suffer from.
Is the postoperative period for anal fissure surgery painful?
NO. Correctly operated patients leave the operating room with practically no pain, only slight discomfort that subsides with conventional analgesia. The next day, with the first bowel movement, the pain is minimal if not nil. All those who undergo fissure surgery when they go for revision comment “I should have been operated the first day I started with this….!!!”.
Time off work after anal fissure surgery
A patient who has undergone fissure surgery will be infinitely better the day after surgery than before surgery. If he was working the day before surgery, why not the day after?
Generally speaking, I recommend my patients to have at least 3 to 5 days off work, especially to familiarize themselves with the cleaning of the area. Even so, it depends on the patient’s job and how bad he/she has had it previously.
Do I need to be treated after anal fissure surgery? Can I travel?
The only thing a fissure operated patient needs is to wash the wound well with a strong sponge, soap and water twice a day (in addition to taking an antibiotic for a week). He/she can travel wherever he/she wants the same day of the operation, since he/she does not require any special care or rest. As I mentioned before, you will have much less pain than before you had surgery.