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World J Clin Cases. Oct 16, 2015; 3(10): 876-879
Published online Oct 16, 2015. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v3.i10.876
Disease that should be remembered: Sacrococcygeal pilonidal sinus disease and short history
Burhan Hakan Kanat, Selim Sözen
Burhan Hakan Kanat, Department of General Surgery, Elazıg Training and Research Hospital, 23000 Elazığ, Turkey
Selim Sözen, Department of General Surgery, Medical Faculty, Namık Kemal University, 59000 Tekirdağ, Turkey
Author contributions: Kanat BH and Sözen S contributed equally to this work; Kanat BH and Sözen S designed the research; Kanat BH and Sözen S performed research; Kanat BH and Sözen S contributed new reagents or analytic tools; Kanat BH and Sözen S analyzed data; Kanat BH and Sözen S wrote the paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No conflict of interest was declared by the authors.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Burhan Hakan Kanat, MD, Department of General Surgery, Elazıg Training and Research Hospital, Rızaiye neighborhood, İnönü street, Number:74, 23000 Elazığ, Turkey. burhankanat@hotmail.com
Telephone: +90-424-2381000 Fax: +90-424-2381000
Received: February 20, 2015
Peer-review started: February 22, 2015
First decision: April 10, 2015
Revised: May 8, 2015
Accepted: August 30, 2015
Article in press: August 31, 2015
Published online: October 16, 2015
Processing time: 238 Days and 0.6 Hours
Abstract

Pilonidal sinus disease has led to heated debates since it was first described in the medical literature. Although a consensus has been built on its etiology and pathogenesis, the same course has not progressed for treatment modality. This review is a short article about the process of pilonidal sinus disease from past to present. Some important points were mentioned between the years 1833, which is accepted as the milestone for the awareness of the disease, in which it was first reported until the year of 1880, in which it was given its name. Although its name has been the same for about two centuries, some other names such as “Jeep Disease” have also been used depending on the population affected by the disease. At present, it is indisputable that the disease is acquired. Large series were presented about the treatment in the last two decades. Some surgical methods were even named after the ones who first described them and they have many supporters. However, since the treatment modalities have some advantages and disadvantages and they do not have marked superiority over others, debates still continue. We hope that pilonidal sinus disease will not lose its significance and be underrated in parallel with the developments in technology and specialization in medicine.

Keywords: Pilonidal sinus; History; Anorectal disease

Core tip: Pilonidal sinus disease has been a debate for about 2 centuries, about which many articles and reviews have been written until now. In this paper, some points that can be accepted as milestones were chronologically presented from the date in which it was first described until today. Since the debates still continue and there is no consensus on the treatment, we suggest that the debates will continue. For this reason and since this article shortly and clearly explains pilonidal sinus disease milestones, we think that it will contribute to the surgeons dealing with the issue.