Abstract
1. Twenty-eight patients subjected to excision of the coccyx for coccygeal pain during the last ten years have been reviewed.
2. No constant means of selection appears to have been used in recommending these patients for operation, and, in retrospect, no factor in the history or examination emerges as reliable for making such selection in the future.
3. Operation may be recommended as likely to provide a cure in about 45 per cent and to give worthwhile relief in another 45 per cent of cases.
4. When conservative treatment has succeeded, operation will not, of course, be required, but failure of conservative treatment is not an essential pre-requisite in recommending operation.
5. If more care were taken to eliminate the markedly psychoneurotic patients the worthwhile results of operation could probably be increased even above 90 per cent.
6. Excision of the coccyx is certainly a useful operation and should not be discarded.
