Fibrin Glue Injection for Anal Fistula

Hello to All,
I am new to the Crohn's Disease Forum. My wife was diagnosed with Crohn's when she was 18, (she's now 48). She was mis-diagnosed (to put it mildly) for for more than a year as Anorexic. By the grace of God a young doctor figured out that she had Crohn's and performed emergency surgery to remove approximately 3 feet of her small intestine. This was in 1983, and until about six years ago she kept the disease under control with a diet and quiet lifestyle. In 2007, a perirectal abscess (and subsequent fistula) required surgery. Kaiser Permenente required her to go on Remicade before they would treat the fistula. She stopped after 4 or 5 treatments due to side effects, Kaiser refused to treat the fistula. She's been living with the fistula ever since.

Has anyone had a Fibrin Glue Injection to treat an anal fistula, or know anything about it? I've found a case study that says it very good treatment option. The problem is that I can't find anyone that is doing it. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Welcome to the forum! I'm sorry your wife is having a flare after being in remission for so long.

I am sorry I never heard of it but I did google and found reference to the glue surgery but not the injection.

Is this the study you saw?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016508510002040

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Just to confirm is your wife still under the care of a GI doc and if so how often is she seeing them? Have any alternative meds been mentioned at all? Is she on anything right now for the crohn's? I cannot understand the reasoning of not treating due to the fact she had an allergic reaction to a med - it's not like this is something she had any contol over. I have not heard of the above mentioned treatment but do also check out our fistula sub forum in case the folks here have: http://www.crohnsforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=76.

AB
xx

Hi Notgutsnoglory,
Yes that is one of the studies, another was published by Journal of the Korean Surgical Society in September 2011. (sorry that I am not able to include links to websites in my posts since I am new to this group). Send me a private message and I will be happy to share any links that I find.

Hi Angrybird,
My wife is not being treated by any doctors at this time. She is not on any meds. Kaiser Permenente, if you haven't already heard, is a good HMO if you are healthy, however if you are sick they will only treat you if you follow their protocol. It is driven purely by profitability. We lost our insurance shortly after that so the point is moot now.
Thanks for the tip on the fistula Forum. I will post there.

The only other thing I can suggest is to also look at our treatment section about alternative meds to try and then discuss with a doc if you can, I know for some meds the drug companies have programmes where you don't have to pay much for them, unfortunately I cannot recall the specific ones but it is worth investigating.