How Are Fistulas Treated?

Video Transcript

"My name's Kayti Brosnan. I'm a registered nurse here in Austin, Texas, and today, I'm going to tell you how to treat fistulas. Some of the things that have to be determined before you treat a fistula is the size of it, the location, what's caused it, what kind of fistula it is. There's three different kinds. There's a blind, which means that it only has open end; incomplete, which means that it's external, but it doesn't attach to anything; and then a complete, where it's an external attaching to an internal organ. So whoever you're working with, you have to be working with a doctor to treat this. This is not something that you want to attempt to do at home. The first thing that they'll determine is is there an infection going on? Do we need to treat it, you know, with an infection before there is a surgical option? So they'll treat...they'll treat it medically with antibiotics. If they determine that it's something that needs to continue draining, so they'll give you antibiotics and then they'll also...they use something called a seton, and that basically keeps the fistula open -- this little tunnel open -- so that pus can continue to drain. Or if it's something like a fistula involved with a cleft palate, they might temporarily close it up to prevent infection until you have matured or gotten to the correct developmental place to actually have that closed up. So that might take years before they actually do that, and that's most beneficial to wait. So one...once they've, like, cleared up the infection and determined which route, then a vascular surgeon or a general surgeon is going to determine what's the best way to help heal this through surgery. They also use these fibrin plugs that they'll plug it up with. And it's important that you have a doctor look at this because once you have a fistula, it actually can recur frequently. And so it's good to get the right treatment the first time around. And that's just some of the treatments of treating a fistula."