A Hemorrhoids Treatment With Laser Surgery

When most people think of lasers and surgery words like advanced, clean, and targeted may come to mind.  If your looking for information on a hemorrhoids laser treatment, then this article should provide the answers your looking for.

Although laser technology can be complex, the concept of how it affects tissue is rather easy to understand.  Coherent laser light carries energy with it.  When this beam of energy (the laser beam) strikes tissue, the atoms in the tissue absorb this energy.  At this point, there is excess energy in the tissue and this excessive energy manifests itself as heat energy.  It is this heat energy that can perform work.

This targeted heat energy can act as a virtual scalpel both cutting tissue and cauterizing and sterilizing blood vessels as it is used.  Thus the skilled surgeon can very accurately excise tissue while preventing bleeding in the same step.

Hemorrhoids laser treatment can involve the use of two differing laser types (CO2 and Nd:YAG), with the Nd:YAG (neodymium:yttrium-aluminum-garnet) being the preferred choice.  As explained earlier, heat in the tissue is the final result and different types of lasers apply this heat differently to different tissue types.  Nd:YAG penetrates tissue more deeply and clots blood more rapidly than the CO2 type.  Adjustments of the duration of use and concentration of the beam can be used to select whether tissue is coagulated or vaporized.

The procedure itself involves the administration of a local anesthetic.  The surgeon will initially expose the anal canal and isolate the targeted hemorrhoidal tissue before proceeding.  Employing the laser, the surgeon uses either wide or narrow beam to either vaporize or coagulate tissue as needed.  The goal is to only affect the tissue targeted and to avoid adjoining or underlying tissue.

Upsides include the reduced or eliminated need of hospitalization, a rare complication rate, low infection rates, and very high success rate approaching 98%.  There is little smoke, sparking or steam emission that obstructs the doctor’s view during the operation.  Most post-operative results are excellent compared to traditional hemorrhoidectomies.  The surgery can be used to treat large hemorrhoids, a limitation with many other non-surgical remedies.

Downsides to laser surgeries involve the relative expense of the equipment, the need for a doctor to be proficient in the use of the equipment and the techniques applied to hemorrhoidal excisions.  Just because one doctor is proficient with a scalpel doesn’t mean the same is true with a laser and vice versa.  Some conflicting studies showed decreased wound healing with laser surgery as well which conflicts with other study results.  Post-operative pain was similar to traditional hemorrhoidectomies.

Any surgical intervention has its risks.  Since the skill necessary to use lasers is not taught in medical school, it is critical to find a surgeon skillfully adept at their use and handling.  Training typically comes from teaching by other proficient surgeons.  Hemorrhoids tend to be a chronic issue, meaning even with surgical measures, if you do not change the conditions which caused their formation, they will most likely reappear.