The Results of 1000 Cleft Lift Patient Surveys
One of the hardest things in clinical research is to actually get opinions from patients regarding their treatment. You might think that this is easy, because everybody has an opinion, and especially right after an operation. But, as the months go by, patients get on with their lives, they move, they even forget all about their pilonidal disease (which is good!). Therefore, there are many reasons why when surveys are sent out they might not elicit a response. This was even harder before the ubiquitous use of email – when this required either clinic visits, postal surveys, or phone calls. Now, we have applications like Survey Monkey that are very helpful in getting surveys into patients mailboxes.
Since 2009 we have been sending surveys to our patients, and today we have reached the numerically interesting number of 1000 patient responses! This has no significance, other than it is a nice round number, is the largest reported survey experience of cleft lift patients in the world, and possibly its numerological significance.
“The numerological significance of the number “1000” points to a time of significant accomplishments, new beginnings, and a vast potential for growth and transformation.”
The significance of this milestone aside, it creates an opportune time to look at the results of our survey. If you would like to see the charts and details, they are all on this webpage.
If you’d like a quick summary here are some of the highlights:
Ease of Scheduling: 97.6% said scheduling was “Very easy”.
Satisfaction with Cleft-Lift Surgery: 98.6% Extremely satisfied or Satisfied.
Recovery Experience: 40.1% Better than expected, 27.3% Easy, 20.0% Very easy.
Post-op Activity Restrictions: 78.1% Felt restrictions were minimal.
Opinions on Cleft-Lift as First Surgery from those who had prior operations, 76.4% wish they had started with cleft-lift.
Opinions on Cleft-Lift as first Surgery for patients who had never had prior operations: 73.7% said “Great choice for me”.
Appearance of Buttocks/Scar: 90.8%: Were either very happy with it, or not really concerned.
In general, patients were very happy with the choice of the cleft lift procedure, and many patients used phrases like:
“Life-changing”
“Gave me my life back”
“I can sit again without pain”
“No more drainage or open wounds”
Several used the word “miracle”, particularly after years of suffering or failed surgeries
We are very proud of these results, and thank all our patients for filling out the forms!