Surgical Management of Hidradenitis Suppurativa: Outcomes of 590 Consecutive Patients

Hidradenitis suppurativa is a progressive, recurrent inflammatory disease. Surgical management is potentially curative with limited efficacy data.

To evaluate hidradenitis surgical patients.

Retrospective review of outcomes of 590 consecutive surgically treated patients.

Most patients were white (91.0% [435/478]), men (337 [57.1%]), smokers (57.7% [297/515]) with Hurley Stage III disease (476 [80.7%]). Procedure types were excision (405 [68.6%]), unroofing (168 [28.5%]), and drainage (17 [2.9%]) treating disease of perianal/perineum (294 [49.8%]), axilla (124 [21.0%]), gluteal cleft (76 [12.9%]), inframammary (12 [2.0%]), and multiple surgical sites (84 [14.2%]). Postoperative complications occurred in 15 patients (2.5%) and one-fourth (144 [24.4%]) suffered postoperative recurrence, which necessitated reoperation in one-tenth (69 [11.7%]) of patients. Recurrence risk was increased by younger age (hazard ratio [HR], 0.8; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.7-0.9), multiple surgical sites (HR, 1.6; 95% CI, 1.1-2.5), and drainage-type procedures (HR, 3.5; 95% CI, 1.2-10.7). Operative location, disease severity, gender, and operative extent did not influence recurrence rate.

Excision and unroofing procedures were effective treatments with infrequent complications and low recurrence rates. Well-planned surgical treatment aiming to remove or unroof the area of intractable hidradenitis suppurativa was highly effective in the management of this challenging disease.