who decides?

i was told it was in the hands of the surgeon(who would choose the best option for myself).i read alot about wounds that have been stiched only to get infected easily again.my option was letting it heal inside out!!!!

Hi,

Yeah i had a closed excision last year as they heal quicker, it got infected and I was still having problems 9 months later. I did some research and found in the states they have a procedure called the Bascom procedure which heals within two weeks. However, only about 9 doctors or so in the UK are familiar with this. I decided I wanted to be seen by one to get their opinion, I ended up travelling about 2 hours to the nearest one, he said he could do it, I had the operation 6 weeks ago and am totally back to normal. I wish I'd had it done sooner. The wound was healed over in 9 days! If you want to search it's called the 'cleft lift' - very few surgeons know this procedure, but there are about a dozen max in the UK that do it, I guess it depends on how lucky you are to be near one.

Good luck!!

thanks for that natbatz,i live in the west of scotland ,any idea if there is a surgeon up here who does this op?

Hiya,

I replied earlier but the moderator's are checking out the link I put in it so perhaps it'll be up later. There are 3 surgeons in scotland that are confirmed to do this procedure, one in glasgow, one in edinburgh and one in dunfermline. I travelled from aberdeen to the surgeon in dunfermline. The list is available on pilonidal.org, if you go to the surgeons hall of fame forum, then look at the Non-USA list, the uk surgeons are on the second page of the pdf. I took this list into my gp and asked to be referred to the surgeon, it's all free on the NHS.

Good luck, hope it helps, let me know if I can help any other way. x

thanks for the tip natabz,theres a surgeon im going to ask my gp to refer me to in glasgow and see how it goes from there