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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Surg. Nov 27, 2025; 17(11): 110143
Published online Nov 27, 2025. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v17.i11.110143
Published online Nov 27, 2025. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v17.i11.110143
Enhanced surgical management of complex anal fistulas via integrated traditional Chinese medicine: A retrospective cohort study
Ji-Feng Liu, Yu Wang, Department of Anorectal Surgery, Luzhou People’s Hospital, Luzhou 646000, Sichuan Province, China
Xue-Song Peng, Qing-Long Li, Department of Anorectal Diseases of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jiangsu Provincial People’s Hospital Chongqing Hospital (Qijiang District People’s Hospital), Chongqing 401420, China
Co-corresponding authors: Xue-Song Peng and Qing-Long Li.
Author contributions: Liu JF, Wang Y, and Peng XS contributed to methodology; Liu JF and Wang Y contributed to conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, writing, and original draft preparation; Peng XS contributed to resources and investigation; Li QL contributed to supervision, validation, funding acquisition, review and editing; Peng XS and Li QL made equal contributions as co-corresponding authors. All authors approved the final version to publish.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Luzhou People’s Hospital, No. LLW202501002.
Informed consent statement: Informed consent was waived by the Ethics Committee of Luzhou People’s Hospital because of the retrospective nature of the study and the use of anonymized clinical data.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Qing-Long Li, B.S, Department of Anorectal Diseases of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jiangsu Provincial People’s Hospital Chongqing Hospital (Qijiang District People’s Hospital), No. 54 Tuowan Branch Road, Gunan Town, Qijiang District, Chongqing 401420, China. 19123401518@163.com
Received: June 13, 2025
Revised: July 23, 2025
Accepted: September 19, 2025
Published online: November 27, 2025
Processing time: 164 Days and 19.6 Hours
Revised: July 23, 2025
Accepted: September 19, 2025
Published online: November 27, 2025
Processing time: 164 Days and 19.6 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: In 132 patients with complex anal fistulas, this retrospective cohort study compared traditional Chinese medicine-integrated surgical treatment with conventional seton drainage. The integrated approach produced better results. Faster healing (21.5 days vs 28.3 days), less problems (10% vs 20%), decreased recurrence rates (2.9% vs 11.3%), and improved patient satisfaction are some of the main benefits. These results provide a viable therapeutic paradigm for situations where traditional methods prove ineffective, supporting the clinical acceptance of evidence-based traditional Chinese medicine integration in difficult anal fistula therapy.