Advice centre / understanding haemorrhoids

Hemorrhoids, Haemorrhoids and Piles

The terms Haemorrhoid (UK spelling), Hemorrhoid (US spelling) and Piles (a traditional slang term) all refer to the same condition. There are a number of different types of hemorrhoids / haemorrhoids / piles. eXroid is a safe and effective treatment for treating internal hemorrhoids.

The exact nature and type of hemorrhoid / piles that you may be suffering from can only be determined after undergoing a proper examination by a medical professional.

To help you understand a little more about the different types of hemorrhoids and how they may affect your life, we’ve put together a few pages that hopefully shed some light on what to look out for.

Piles can be an embarrasing subject to talk about, so the better informed you are, the better able you are to seek help and take steps towards eradicating them.

Please select from the following topics:

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Internal haemorrhoids

Internal haemorrhoids are actually swollen veins and their support tissues, situated in the lower part of your rectum. Sometimes the blood vessels and associated tissues become weak and stretch so thin that they bulge and become irritated.

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External haemorrhoids

External haemorrhoids are different from internal haemorrhoids in two important ways: the first and most obvious difference is where they are located – external haemorrhoids, as the name suggests, are on the outside of your anus. Internal haemorrhoids are on the inside.

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Thrombosed haemorrhoids

A thrombosed haemorrhoid is the medical term for a haemorrhoid that has become swollen due to a small blood clot within the haemorrhoid. The word ‘thrombosis’ means clotting.

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Prolapsed haemorrhoids

Internal haemorrhoids can “prolapse.” If they prolapse, they become swollen and protrude outside your rectum. They can be quite uncomfortable when this happens and are more likely to be prone to bleeding.

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Sentinel piles

Accurately diagnosing haemorrhoids is difficult, even for medical practitioners. This is especially true of sentinel piles, because they are in fact not haemorrhoids at all. A sentinel pile is also known as a sentinel anal skin tag or rectal skin tag, and, for the more medically minded, may also be called a hypertrophied papilla or fibro-epithelial polyp.

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