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Professor Mark Whiteley
Mark Whiteley
What is the relationship between haemorrhoids and pelvic vein reflux?
Professor Mark Whiteley explains that the relationship between haemorrhoids and pelvic vein reflux wasn’t well known in the past, but that he has recently published a paper showing that if you have haemorrhoids, you have a high chance of pelvic vein reflux in the internal iliac veins.
Transcript
That's an interesting question. The relationship between haemorrhoids and pelvic vein reflux hasn't really been known in the past, and we've recently published a paper showing that if you have haemorrhoids, you have a high chance of pelvic vein reflux in these veins called the internal iliac veins. At the moment, there's still research going on to find out whether the problem is primarily from haemorrhoids or from pelvic varicose veins causing the haemorrhoids, and it does seem to be the latter. We know that if you treat the pelvic veins, about a third of people's haemorrhoids disappear.