Objective: Hemorrhoidal disease (HD) is most frequent during and after the pregnancy, always resulting disabling and not without the occurrence of complications that make necessary a surgical therapy. In these cases the HD could be underestimated by obstetricians, precluding the patient's access to possible medical and surgical or rehabilitative treatments to correct eventual dysfunction related to the delivery.
Materials and methods: For this purpose the Authors have administered a questionnaire at 165 obstetricians regarding the occurrence of HD symptoms according to our experience, the prevalence and the modalities of treatment of HD and the knowledge of specialists and methods to cure HD.
Results: The interviewed obstetricians in a proportion of 95% referred the presence of HD symptoms during pregnancy in particular in three-fourths of patients who have a natural (57%) or a vaginal operative delivery (41%). It was resulted that only the 42% of obstetricians refer to the specialist for HD and approximatively the half of them not known the role of perineologist or the pelvic rehabilitative methods.
Conclusions: Our study seems to confirm that the management of HD during pregnancy is inadequate due to the lack of collaboration between obstetrician, gynaecologist and the specialist of anal and pelvic pathologies.