Whether you are eligible for each is a clinical question answered by your grade. This page is the other half: what each one actually asks of you, with the case for both put properly rather than one set up to lose.
It asks for very little. Minutes in an ordinary clinic room, no general anaesthetic, no bowel preparation, no lift home and no day written off work. You walk out and carry on, which is a genuine advantage and not a small one when you are weighing two options.
What it asks in return is patience across more than one appointment, because a single session generally treats one column and most people turn out to have several of them involved. A course of two or three visits spaced weeks apart is a genuinely different kind of commitment from one bigger event.
And it asks you to accept a slightly less certain endpoint, because the tissue is withered rather than taken away. Banding covers the procedure itself, how many sessions covers the shape of the commitment, and aftercare covers the days between visits.
Deciding in Montreal
How to weigh it
Weighing the two in Montreal, in order
Settle eligibility first
Your grade may remove the choice entirely, and if so this page is interesting rather than decisive for you.
Count the appointments
A banding course is several visits over weeks. An operation is one event with a longer tail afterwards.
Weigh certainty
Removal leaves nothing in that position. Withering is less final, which matters more to some people than others.
Ask about your case
Not about the procedures in general. The useful answer is specific to what your examination found.
The case for surgery
What an operation buys, and costs
It buys finality of a kind the office procedures cannot offer, because the tissue is removed rather than deprived of its supply. For disease that has already progressed past what a band can hold, it is also the only option that addresses what is actually there.
What it costs is an anaesthetic and a recovery that is longer than walking out of a clinic room. That is the honest trade, and it is a real cost rather than a formality. This site does not attach a number to it, because no sourced figure for it exists.
Neither of those two paragraphs declares a winner, and that is deliberate rather than evasive. Hemorrhoid surgery covers what removal actually involves, in office against surgery covers which of the two your grade permits, and prolapse covers the check that decides it.
Several visitsBanding asks for
A recoverySurgery asks for
NeitherWinner declared here
Both routes
The two Montreal routes in detail
Each procedure on its own terms, the clinical line between them, and what decides recurrence either way.
What people ask when both routes are genuinely on the table for them.
Often your grade chooses for you, which is the first thing to settle. Where both are genuinely available, the trade is several short visits against one event with a longer recovery.
Removal leaves nothing in that position to come down again, so in that narrow sense yes. It still does nothing about the pressure that produced the first one, which is the recurrence story.
Longer than walking out of a clinic room, and we are not going to put a figure on it because no sourced one exists. It is the question to ask a surgeon about your own case.
For grades where banding is appropriate, that is often exactly the sequence. For a grade four it is not, because a course that was never going to hold costs you time and money.
It does, and it works in both directions depending on your coverage and how many banding sessions you would need. The cost pages explain the variables rather than quoting a figure.
Because the answer depends on your grade and on what you are willing to trade. A page recommending one route to everybody is selling rather than informing.
The comparison
Two different kinds of cost
Banding costs patience
Several short visits over weeks, no anaesthetic, and a less final endpoint than removal gives you.
Surgery costs recovery
One event, an anaesthetic, and a longer tail afterwards, in exchange for a more definite result.
Grade usually decides
Most people do not have a free choice here, which is why eligibility is the first thing to settle.
No winner on this page
A guide recommending one route to everybody is selling. The right answer depends on your own grade.
