Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
close window
Housecall Archives
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
close window
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staffA rectovaginal fistula may form as a result of:
- Injuries in childbirth. Obstetric injuries are the most common cause of rectovaginal fistulas. Such injuries include a tear in the perineum or an infection or tear of an episiotomy — surgical incision to enlarge the perineum. These may happen following a long, difficult labor. Fistulas arising from childbirth may also involve injury to your anal sphincter, the rings of muscle at the end of the rectum that help you hold in stool.
- Crohn's disease. The second most common cause of rectovaginal fistulas, Crohn's disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease in which the lining of your digestive tract becomes inflamed. About 9 percent of women with Crohn's disease develop a rectovaginal fistula.
- Surgery involving your vagina, perineum, rectum or anus. Prior surgery in your lower pelvic region, such as removal of your uterus (hysterectomy), in rare cases can lead to development of a fistula.
- Cancer or radiation treatment in your pelvic area. A cancerous tumor in your rectum, cervix, vagina, uterus or anal canal can cause a rectovaginal fistula. Radiation therapy for cancers in these areas can also put you at risk of developing a fistula. A fistula caused by radiation usually forms within two years following the treatment. Before the fistula forms, you may experience pain in your anus or rectum, bloody diarrhea, or bright red blood in your stool. If you spot these warning signs, your doctor will first rule out a return of cancer as the cause.
- Other causes. Less commonly, a rectovaginal fistula may be caused by infections in your anus or rectum, infections of small, bulging pouches in your digestive tract (diverticulitis) or vaginal trauma.
