Coccygectomy for coccygodynia: A single-center experience

Abstract

Spine fractures are most commonly observed among older people due to weak bones and irregular postures. These fractures of 10 lead to coccygodynia. Women are 5 times more prone to developing coccygodynia as compared to men. Initially, different painkillers, physiotherapy, and other non-surgical treatments are recommended to reduce the pain. However, in case of the failure of these treatments, a surgical procedure (named coccygectomy) is considered to remove the tailbone to achieve effective outcomes. The main aim of this study is to determine the effectiveness of coccygectomy in treating coccygodynia (after the failure of different non-surgical treatments) in the context of patients who were treated at Konya City Hospital neurosurgery department, Turkey. In this study, a total of 14 cases of coccygodynia treated with coccygectomy at Konya City Hospital were selected from the period of August 2020 and January 2022. These patients were given different treatments for 6 to 7 months before the operation. Therefore, due to the lack of positive outcomes, a coccygectomy was performed by a senior surgeon. Visual analogue scale was used to assess the pain of the patients after the surgery. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used for statistical analysis. The level of significance was set at P < .05. The results of this study showed that more women suffered from coccygodynia as compared to men. Most of the patients had Type I (35.7%) and Type IV (35.7%) coccyx. The visual analogue scale was reduced after the surgery (P < .0011), showing positive outcomes. Ten (71.4%) cases showed excellent outcomes, whereas only one (7.1%) case showed poor outcomes after the surgery, and wound infections were observed in two (14.2%) cases post-operatively. The results obtained from this study concluded that in case of failure of conservative non-surgical treatments for coccygodynia, coccygectomy has emerged as an effective surgical method which is recommended by various surgeons to reduce the pain by removing the tailbone. Additionally, only a few complications such as infection as a relevant concern after this type of surgery were observed, and most of the patients were satisfied with the outcomes and also recommended it to others.