The Latest Clinical Research

The Latest Clinical Research

Dr. Immerman’s results on 700 cleft lift patients

Dr. Immerman has been keeping track of his cleft lift patients since 1993, and has just published his results in a peer reviewed scientific article. Although this was meant to be viewed by the surgical community, patients are certainly welcome to take a look at it.

The major findings described in the paper are:

• Patients who had a cleft lift, but did not have any previous surgery and did not have wounds near the anus, had a 98.7% success rate with a single procedure.
• Patients who had previous failed pilonidal surgery had a success rate of 94.7%.
• Patients who had wounds actually on the edge of the anus were the most difficult group to treat and had a success rate of 84.4%, but a second revisional operation almost always solved the problem.
• No patients in this series had a recurrence occur after 24 months from the cleft lift surgery.
• There was no category of patient in whom this was not a highly successful approach.

If you would like to view the article, you may view and/or download it from THIS LINK.

It is important, when choosing a surgeon, to know their actual experience and results with this procedure, and Dr. Immerman is proud of his results, and is glad to share them. Taking care of pilonidal disease can be very humbling, and a 100% success rate is very elusive, but these results are coming close and have defined certain groups of patients who are at higher risk of recurrent problems or failures. Currently, there is not another operation that has a better success rate, and the cleft lift is indeed a good solution in all situations.