Anorectal Diseases

Hello!

I am Dr. Suhas Patil. I am a general and laparoscopic surgeon. So today we will be discussing rectoanal diseases. What are the rectoanal diseases? Nowadays we are almost all of us are suffering from this disease at some stage of life. You must have heard about hemorrhoids, fissures, fistula, pilonidal sinus, perianal abscess, constipation: so they form a group of rectoanal diseases. Now, what are the causes, what is the basic etiology? So, I suppose we have changed lifestyle, our food habits are an irregular, irregular eating habit, lack of high-quality food in diet, lack of high fibre diet, lack of high protein diet, inadequate intake of water, we are very much accustomed to fast food and stress. So, all these factors contribute to the formation of rectoanal diseases. Now let us turn towards what are the symptoms, how we will come to know that yes I am suffering from this disease and I need to consult my physician.

Most common symptoms are anorectal bleeding, passage of blood while passing motion, pain while passing motion, intense pain, patient may experience pain maybe hours together after passing motion and pain it will be an excruciating as if something has been cut there or suppression present or itching in perianal region some patients present with some mass coming out of perianal region, some patient present with a soft swelling around perianal region a which is extremely painful that can be issue of rectal abscess. So these are the common symptoms with which patient can present to physician. Now, we turn towards the treatment modalities. Till day, the treatment for this rectoanal disease is open conventional surgeries.

In open conventional surgeries, we use to cut, we use to excise the used fistula, used pile mass which to excise the whole fistula track by keeping a big area open. So naturally patient has to come to the hospital for our regular follow up dressings and the period can be more than 2 months also. Again, the hospital stay of the patient was increased and it was an all together with conventional surgeries, the experience of the patient was painful, patient also used to hamper his professional duties also. What is laser? It’s light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Light waves they are amplified by continuous stimulation so the light that is formed after laser that light is highly coherent with the same frequency, with the same wavelength and that light is used to cut our tissues, used to obliterate our fistula track, used to obliterate our pilonidal sinus track, so this is a laser and the peculiarity of laser is it acts on the target tissue so there is minimal or less damage to the surrounding tissues which are very vital in the rectoanal region.

With laser, we can tackle all modalities like grade 2 hemorrhoids, grade 3 hemorrhoids, prolapsed hemorrhoids, all kinds of fistula whether it could be simple fistula, complex fistula, recurrent fistula, pilonidal sinus whether it can be recurrent pilonidal sinus, laser fixtures; so all these conditions can be well tackled with laser. Naturally as there is no cut or minimal cut, the pain for the patient after surgery is very minimal with laser, patient hospital stay is minimal, the patient can be discharged the very next day after surgery and we are not leaving any raw area so there is no need of follow-up dressings, patient can resume his professional activities as early as possible after laser. So, these are the advantages of laser. We are doing all kinds of rectoanal surgeries with laser and our patients with these surgeries are very happy, very convincing and looking forward more with the laser cases. So the take-off message is rectoanal surgeries nowadays are no more painful however it is a pleasant experience for the patients. Thank you.