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From: Proceedings 10th World Congress of Cryosurgery
Twemty-Year Eexperience With Ccryosurge
ry Proctology
November 1998
J. Faltyn
DEPT. OF SURGERY, CHARLES UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL PRAGUE 10, CZECH REPUBLIC
Cryosurgery is very popular for treatment of proctological lesions. One should consider the merits of cryosurgery in therapy of nearly all
the benignant proctological lesions as well as palliative therapy of anal end rectal tumors. All operations are performed in the region of
anus or transanally. The indication criteria are specified according to which patients are selected for cryosurgery. The use of powerful
cryoprobes greatly improves the results. We must stress the need of a rational combination of surgical and endoscopic methods.
Cryosurgery is very often performed in outpatients departments. It is great advantage for the patients because cryodestruction is a
painless and bloodless method in most cases. Within the time period 1976 - 1997, a total of 1258 cryosurgical operations in proctology
were performed in our clinic. 423 of these were performed for anal end rectal malignant tumors. Hemorrhoids end fissures create 87% of
patients operated for benignant disease. Half of our cryosurgical procedures (47%) were carried out without any anesthesia. During the
22-year time period, we have not met with any serious preoperative or postoperative complications that would make a repeated surgery
necessary. The merits and disadvantages of cryodestruction are weighed in the light of our experience. Illustrative case reports and
statistics of performed operations are given. We do not perform cryosurgery unless we can reasonably expect that the treatment will
improve the local finding and will make that what remains of the patient's life time more tolerable.
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