Here is a website for the Colorectal center I went to today. They were very professional. The great thing about them is they only treat hemmies, fissures, and colon cancer. I felt right at home!!
The reason I am posting the website is because they have several different locations in several different states. It's worth checking into if your looking for a good CRS!
http://www.crhcenter.com/patients.html

Yap, that is the one I went to in SF ! Great people and brand new facility. CRS though did not like doing LIS or any surgical procedure unless one was on a death bed begging for it , so I had to go to the guy who likes to cut ; ) ! Than I went for post op to CRH center again - one has to use tricks to get the best possible care I guess LOL ; ) !!!

It was a very nice clinic, wasn't it? My doc was the same way - he will operate, but he truely belived that 90% of fissures can be cured without surgery. I think that is the clinics motto. I also agree that 90% of fissures can heal w/o LIS - but I think the reoccurance rate is high.

Yeah, but they all loose focus that those 90% are acute fissures and they heal in couple of weeks the most and mostly without any special treatment. The chronic fissure (one that lasts more than couple of months) needs more aggressive approach - special creams, botox and dietary modifications. OF THOSE chronic ones about 90 % heal in 6 to 12 week period with creams or Botox and such. Now, we are talking about ULTRA chronic ones , LOL, that last more than couple of months regardless of creams etc. In my opinion, those are candidates for the LIS and any doctor refusing doing that after patient tried everything is negligent or uninformed about statistics. The longer one has chronic fissure the higher chance of infection, scar tissue formation, and the harder it is for fissure to heal even after LIS !!! I was warned by 2 CRS that one should not wait longer than a year because scar tissue and granulation starts to form and it prevents healing even after surgery. I had my fissure for only 5 months and CRS already did find some extra tissue forming (edges of fissure were not smooth so he performed fissurectomy too). I hated him for doing so , but now that I am more informed I am glad that he did it. It made optimal conditions for my fissure to heal completely and close any space under it so no infection would start there.
I hope that you will heal soon !

I agree with you Fiss - my bum keeps thinking thats its going to magically heal on its own!

Hey I am tired,
That was a great website and very informative. Thanks so much for posting that. Here is a link to where I went for my treatment.
http://www.viahealth.org/body_surgical.cfm?id=450
Dr. Steven Ognibene is my doctor. I like him alot. and he knows his stuff.
I hope it works.
Thanks,
Patty