I have asked about this before but am hoping there may be someone out there who can now provide some info. I'm scheduled to go the Cleveland Clinic (Dr. Shen) in a couple of weeks potentially for an endoscopic procedure to close a pouch vaginal fistula using clips. I'm really hesitant about it. Has anyone had this procedure and what are the thoughts/outcomes? Thanks so much.
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I had several vaginal fistula repairs at CCF with no success. However I have not heard of ‘clips’ before so maybe this is good. You’re with the best of the best (Dr. Shen) so hopefully this will be a successful repair.
Dr. Shen "experimented" with me about 6-7 yrs ago using doxycycline injections in fistula, they didn't work. Did you ask him how many times he's done it, and what the results were with those patients?
There was a paper published a year ago. It only involved 29 people (both UC and Crohn's). Twenty six were successful but 16 of those required more than one procedure. One (of the remaining 3) had serious complications. So, the stats are good but the number of participants is low. I will meet with him and see where it goes.
Are you managing ok with your fistula?
He had me come back 3 times for the doxy injections (done during a pouchoscopy-type of procedure), but no luck. $$$. I had my pouch removed in Oct., along with the fistulas. No more probs, just a tiny bit of leakage now and then. Have you tried a search with "clip" on here? I sorta kinda maybe remember some possible threads where clips were being used/tried ...?
