[Pit-picking surgery for pilonidal disease]

The pit-picking method was first described by J. Bascom in 1980, however, this minimally invasive technique is used only by a minority of surgeons yet.

Surgery was performed under local anesthesia. All primary pits in the midline were removed by excising a border of skin of <1 mm and a 1 cm long incision was made parallel to one side of the cleft to open the chronic abscess cavity. No specific postoperative wound care was given.

Pit-picking surgery was carried out 157 times in a total of 153 patients (126 males) between June 2007 and November 2010. Follow-up information was available in 123 cases and 21 patients (17%) developed disease recurrence after a mean follow-up time of 7.1 months. By multivariate analysis, a body mass index (BMI) >25 kg/m(2) (p=0.019) and duration of the disease of ≥6 months (p=0.017) were statistically significantly associated with disease recurrence after pit-picking surgery. The recurrence occurred more often in male than in female patients (20% versus 4.5%, p=0.12)

Patients with pilonidal disease can be successfully treated by the pit-picking procedure in more than 80% of selected cases. Female patients and non-overweight male patients with short-term disease benefit most from this treatment method.