Hello,
I just came back from my CRS - the background is AF for 9 weeks, using Diltiazem / Nifedipine for almost 6. It seems that my fissure is a bit different from most in the forum - like everybody else, it began with blood and spasms to the point where I'd spend a good deal of my day in pain. It was never excrutiating, but always strong enough to make me want to do nothing.
Today, I still bleed every other day or so, but my pain is pretty much gone. I had 3 instances of pain in teh past 2 weeks, and all cases were very mild and lasted no more than 1 hour. I actually spent 6 full days with no pain whatsoever. My CRS said that my fissure is healing given my drastic improvement of pain, but she can still see the fissure open (and bleeding).
I will go on vacation in a couple of weeks, so she said that I should keep using Nifedipine since it's helping me so much and my pain is almost zero. Now the oddity - after I'm back, she will try CAUTERIZING the fissure with Silver Nitrate!
This CRS is awesome and routinely performs LIS and many other procedures (including some very advanced for cancer for instance) so I'd bet that she knows what she's talking about. I just found odd that I hardly see this approach mentioned in the forum. She said that she only goes for LIS after trying all other more conservative options - not because LIS is bad or dangerous, but because she is pretty conservative.
Anyone with Silver Nitrate experience?