Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Aug 14, 2016; 22(30): 6936-6943
Published online Aug 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i30.6936
Prospective evaluation of a new device for the treatment of anal fistulas
Carlo Ratto, Francesco Litta, Lorenza Donisi, Angelo Parello
Carlo Ratto, Francesco Litta, Lorenza Donisi, Angelo Parello, Proctology Unit, Department of Surgical Sciences, Catholic University, 00168 Rome, Italy
Author contributions: Ratto C contributed to conception and design, data collection, analysis of literature; Litta F contributed to design, data collection, analysis of literature, writing of the manuscript; Donisi L and Parello A contributed to design, data collection, analysis of literature.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors of this article have no commercial associations that might give rise to a conflict of interest in connection with the article submitted.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Carlo Ratto, MD, FASCRS, Proctology Unit, Department of Surgical Sciences, Catholic University, Largo A. Gemelli, 8, 00168 Rome, Italy. carloratto@tiscali.it
Telephone: +39-335-6886968 Fax: +39-06-30156579
Received: March 29, 2016
Peer-review started: April 5, 2016
First decision: May 12, 2016
Revised: June 11, 2016
Accepted: July 6, 2016
Article in press: July 6, 2016
Published online: August 14, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Surgical treatment of anal fistulas is still controversial. This prospective study is the first to reporton the implantation of a new device, the Curaseal AF™ device. Several interesting results emerged concerning the safety of the procedure and its effectiveness in the short-term follow-up.