Pain in the bottom—anal pain, or rectal pain—can be very uncomfortable. This may cause extreme discomfort from going to the toilet to merely sitting. Excruciating pain in the bottom area may also spread to the other area, such as the stomach, making the discomfort even worse. There are in fact, a quite large variety of risk factors that may lead to pain in the bottom area. These risk factors include the ones, which are less harmless and some others, which can be much more severe. As the pain may affect children, adults, and the elderly, it becomes essential to figure the causes out in order to find the most suitable treatments. Proper initial treatments should help reduce the caused pain and when done consistently, may help get rid of the causal risk factors.
How is pain in the anus diagnosed?
In diagnosing the main possible cause of your anus pain, the doctor requires you to mention all symptoms and signs you have been experiencing. Through your specifically-described symptoms, the doctor will draw a conclusion about how you are suffering from pain in the anus. This might also require a close, careful examination of the bottom area. You might also be asked whether or not you have ever spotted blood drips in stool recently. If this examination is unable to give a conclusion about the possible main cause, the doctor is going to suggest an endoscopic examination, where a thin, flexible, camera-equipped instrument is inserted into your anus.
Why do I get sharp pain in my anus?
Following a series of examination, you will be able to know the exact cause of your intermittent or continuous rectal pain. Some possible risk factors that may lead to this kind of pain include:
Hemorrhoids
This is a swelling of the vein or veins at the anus, which is mostly caused by hard straining during bowel movements. Hemorrhoids may also occur as a result of prolonged constipation and child birthing. Main symptoms of hemorrhoids include swelling of the anus and sharp pain when sitting and defecating. This hemorrhoid-induced anus inflammation may get hardened, causing both painful and itchy sensation around the anus. When untreated, there will be blood clot in the hemorrhoids, causing the pain to elevate.
Anal fissure
Different from painful hemorrhoids, anal fissure causes sharp pain in the anus due to a small tear in the skin at the opening of the anus. As this tear of the skin causes an open wound to the opening of the anus, sharp pain becomes a common consequence. The main cause of this anal fissure problem is large, hard stool that is resulted from constipation. Anal fissure may or may not be accompanied with blood drips during or after bowel movements. Anal fissure pain, which is illustrated as a knife-like pain during its initial occurrence will last for hours or days when untreated properly. The pain specifically raises when you are defecating, but is not going to go away when you are doing some other activities.
Anal abscess
An anal abscess commonly occurs due to poor hygiene practices around the area. This may cause throbbing sharp pain that gets worse within days. Similar to abscesses on some other body parts, anal abscess may drain naturally without any treatments. However, the sharp pain may last, especially if it is not treated after burst.
When to see a doctor?
Despite the caused sharp pain, injuries around the anus are commonly harmless and thus, can be treated at home. However, seek medical care if:
- Home remedies you are performing does not give any improvements to the affected anus.
- You are noticing and experiencing prolonged bleeding. This might be a sign of a more serious problem, especially if it gets larger in amount eventually.
- If you are suffering from either fever or child following the pain in the anus.
- The pain does not merely affect the rectum and anus, but spread to other areas of the body, such as the abdomen as well as the upper thighs.
- You notice some discharge from the anus. Uncommon discharge might be a sign that your body cannot fight the infection, so that medications and medical treatments might be required.