Botox and CCBs were equivalent to GTN in efficacy with fewer adverse events .
No medical therapy came close to the efficacy of surgical sphincterotomy , though none in these RCTs was associated with the risk of incontinence .
Medical therapy for chronic anal fissure , acute fissure and fissure in children may be applied with a chance of cure that is marginally better than placebo , and , for chronic fissure in adults , far less effective than surgery
BACKGROUND Because of the disability associated with surgery for anal fissure and the risk of incontinence , medical alternatives for surgery have been sought .
Most recently , pharmacologic methods that relax the anal smooth muscle , to accomplish reversibly what occurs in surgery , have been used to obtain fissure healing .
OBJECTIVES To assess the efficacy and morbidity of various medical therapies for anal fissure .
Lateral internal sphincterotomy is not redundant in the era of glyceryl trinitrate therapy for chronic anal fissure
Lateral internal sphincterotomy has been the st and ard treatment for chronic anal fissure , but fissure healing rates of up to 80 % with topical glyceryl trinitrate ( GTN ) treatment have suggested that this operation may become redundant . We evaluated the results of topical treatment of chronic anal fissures with 0.2 % GTN for 6 weeks in the outpatient clinical setting , outside the confines of a r and omized clinical trial . The role of lateral internal sphincterotomy in the GTN era was also assessed . GTN induced fissure healing in 21 of 49 consecutive patients .  Fissures healed spontaneously in 2 patients who discontinued GTN because of headache . Lateral internal sphincterotomy was performed in 26 patients who had persistent symptoms after 6 weeks of GTN therapy . At the 6-week post-sphincterotomy review , all fissures had healed and there were no complications . In this study topical GTN for treatment of chronic anal fissure in the outpatient setting was not as effective as demonstrated in controlled clinical trials . Lateral internal sphincterotomy is still a good therapeutic option , especially in patients not responding to GTN
Botox and CCBs were equivalent to GTN in efficacy with fewer adverse events .
No medical therapy came close to the efficacy of surgical sphincterotomy , though none in these RCTs was associated with the risk of incontinence .
Medical therapy for chronic anal fissure , acute fissure and fissure in children may be applied with a chance of cure that is marginally better than placebo , and , for chronic fissure in adults , far less effective than surgery
BACKGROUND Because of the disability associated with surgery for anal fissure and the risk of incontinence , medical alternatives for surgery have been sought .
Most recently , pharmacologic methods that relax the anal smooth muscle , to accomplish reversibly what occurs in surgery , have been used to obtain fissure healing .
OBJECTIVES To assess the efficacy and morbidity of various medical therapies for anal fissure .