Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Nov 26, 2019; 7(22): 3742-3750
Published online Nov 26, 2019. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v7.i22.3742
Treatment of hemorrhoids: A survey of surgical practice in Australia and New Zealand
George E Fowler, Javariah Siddiqui, Assad Zahid, Christopher John Young
George E Fowler, Department of Colorectal Surgery, Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, Exeter EX2 5DW, United Kingdom
Javariah Siddiqui, Assad Zahid, Christopher John Young, Department of Colorectal Surgery, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Newtown 2042, NSW, Australia
Author contributions: Fowler GE, Zahid A and Young CJ designed the research, Fowler GE, Siddiqui J and Young CJ analysed the data, Fowler GE, Siddiqui J, Zahid A and Young CJ wrote the paper.
Institutional review board statement: All specimens from the patients were obtained after their informed consent and ethical permission was obtained for participation in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors report no relevant conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Christopher John Young, FACS, MBBS, Professor, Department of Colorectal Surgery, Head of Department, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Medical Centre, Suite G07, 100 Carillon Avenue, Newtown 2042, NSW, Australia. cyoungnsw@aol.com
Telephone: +61-2-95190064 Fax: +61-1300-078746
Received: August 14, 2019
Peer-review started: August 14, 2019
First decision: October 14, 2019
Revised: October 21, 2019
Accepted: October 30, 2019
Article in press: October 30, 2019
Published online: November 26, 2019
Processing time: 103 Days and 11.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Clinical practice guidelines are created to recommend therapies based on the highest levels of evidence. It becomes important to determine whether clinical practice is reflecting management outlined in these guidelines. This paper is the first to assess Australian and New Zealand practice with guidelines in the management of hemorrhoids. While this study has identified areas of colorectal surgeon consensus with hemorrhoid clinical practice guidelines, many more areas of community equipoise have been found, including the initial management of internal hemorrhoids. It is these areas of uncertainty and disagreement which would benefit from high quality research.