Diagnosis of piles

Your surgeon will ask about your symptoms and examine you. This may involve a rectal examination, where he will gently insert a gloved finger into your back passage. Your surgeon may also ask you about your medical history.

To examine the walls of the anal canal, your doctor may use a proctoscope (also called an anoscope). This is a short tube with transparent walls, which can be gently passed into your back passage. You won’t need to have an anaesthetic.

A similar examination, using a longer tube called a sigmoidoscope, allows your doctor to view the lower part of the large bowel and helps to rule out problems in the rectum.

At hospital, the whole of your large bowel can be viewed with a colonoscopy. A colonoscopy is a test that allows your doctor to look inside your large bowel using a narrow, flexible, tube-like endocope called a colonoscope.