Acute appendicitis diagnostic accuracy

ABSTRACT

Acute appendicitis remains a diagnostic challenge to the surgeon. In part, this is because of the variable presentation of the disease and many other diseases mimicking appendicitis, and in part, there is no absolutely accurate diagnostic test to diagnose acute appendicitis. In this study, we investigated the rate of diagnostic accuracy in patients who underwent emergency appendectomy because of suspicion of acute appendicitis in the emergency department of Kasr El-Aini hospital for a total number of 263 patients. Before operation the symptoms and signs of the patients were recorded on special forms, on which the operative findings, the result of the routine histopathologic examination of the removed appendices, and the laboratory studies of total and differential leucocytic count were also recorded. The patients were grouped into 4 groups according to whether it was simple appendicitis or perforated and whether there was surgical or non-surgical disease with the normal appendix. Based on histopathologic and operative findings, the diagnostic accuracy was 79 percent, 84 cases were found to have negative appendix, 6 of them had other surgical disorders indicating immediate surgery, thus diagnostic accuracy of acute appendicitis is 79 percent, but the overall accuracy for acute surgical disease is 80.5 percent