The main symptoms of hemorrhoids are itching and pain caused by skin irritation. In 1st degree hemorrhoids, patients often notice symptoms such as intestinal bleeding, which manifests itself as light red stool deposits or on toilet paper. Pain is not yet evident here.
2nd degree hemorrhoids rarely cause bleeding, but the patient often feels symptoms such as burning, painful sitting or wetting of the hemorrhoids. In stage 3, patients suffer from symptoms such as itching, pain and increased secretion of mucus. Bleeding hardly occurs here either.
Hemorrhoids in the 4th degree are now very painful and ulcerations, i.e. tissue defects of the anal mucosa, which can bleed, occur. Rarely, hemorrhoidal bleeding can also occur very strongly. This is especially true if the blood pressure in the arteries is very high or the flow of blood through the liver is impaired, for example by cirrhosis of the liver. In this case, there is a backlog in the veins of the hemorrhoids and heavy bleeding can occur, which even in extreme cases may require a blood transfusion.
