Stop Suffering in Silence: Advanced, Lasting Relief for Chronic Hemorrhoids

In most cases, hemorrhoids aren’t exactly what we’d call medically serious, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t significantly affect your quality of life. Itching, pain, rectal bleeding — these are all potential side effects of hemorrhoids that you’re definitely better off without.

You’re certainly not alone in your struggles if you consider that hemorrhoids affect about 20% of Americans, including half of people over the age of 50.

We want everyone to know, including you, that there are solutions for chronic hemorrhoids. At Fairfax Colon & Rectal Surgery, our team of colorectal specialists offers several effective treatment options for stubborn hemorrhoids, and we’re confident we can help you find much-needed relief.

A quick brief about hemorrhoids

In brief, hemorrhoids are enlarged veins that form in your rectum and around your anus. Most of us have hemorrhoids, but only a fraction of them lead to symptoms.

When they do cause symptoms, they typically involve the pain, itching, and bleeding we mentioned earlier. For some, these symptoms can be persistent and severe enough to significantly affect a person’s well-being, making treatment a priority.

Solutions for stubborn hemorrhoids

For more minor issues with hemorrhoids, some over-the-counter ointments and creams can work well, but these often fall short for chronic hemorrhoids.

If your hemorrhoids have crossed over into a chronic and treatment-resistant issue, then it’s time to get more aggressive with one of these procedures:

Rubber band ligation

With this approach, we tie a rubber band around the base of the diseased vein to cut off the blood supply, which eventually causes the vein to collapse. Rest assured, whatever blood was using the vessel will reroute to healthier vessels.

Infrared coagulation

If you have a small hemorrhoid that’s bleeding a lot, infrared coagulation is an effective treatment that uses light energy to shut down the vein. As with rubber band ligation, blood reroutes to other vessels, and your body reabsorbs the remnants of the diseased vein.

Sclerotherapy

We inject a foam or sclerosing agent into the hemorrhoid, causing the blood vessels to shut down.

Hemorrhoidectomy

For large external hemorrhoids or prolapsed hemorrhoids, we might recommend a hemorrhoidectomy, a procedure in which we surgically remove the blood vessel.

Transanal hemorrhoidal dearterialization (THD) 

Using an ultrasonic Doppler probe, we locate the main arteries that service your hemorrhoids and tie them off. The goal of THD is to cut off the blood supply to your hemorrhoids to reduce the size of the blood vessel.

The good news is that we perform each of these hemorrhoid treatments on an outpatient basis, which means you can go home the same day. 

Since recurrence rates for hemorrhoids are about 20%, we may need to perform a series of treatments, but we want you to know that we will work with you until you find comfort again.

To determine the best treatment option for your chronic hemorrhoids, please click here to schedule an appointment at one of our five offices in the Fairfax, Virginia, area.