A Comparative Study between Pre-Operative and Intra-Operative Findings among Patients with Acute Appendicitis

Abstract

Background: Acute appendicitis could be due to a bacterial, viral or parasitic infection in the digestive tract, which can enlarge the tissue of the appendix wall, stools causing a blockage in the tube between the large intestine and the appendix tumors, inflammatory bowel disease, injury or trauma to the abdomen. It is a sudden and severe inflammation of the appendix. The symptoms of acute appendicitis occur suddenly and are usually severe. In severe cases, appendicectomy is often needed. Aim of the study: The aim of this study was to compare between pre-operative and intra-operative findings among patients with acute appendicitis. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in the department of Surgery, North East Medical College Hospital, Sylhet, Bangladesh during the period from July 2008 to June 2009. In total 100 clinically diagnosed cases of acute appendicitis were enrolled in this study as study subjects. Proper written consents were taken from all the participants before data collection. All the pre-operative and intra-operative findings among patients were recorded and analyzed. All data were processed, analyzed and disseminated by using SPSS version 16.0 program as per necessity. Results: In this study, among total 100 cases, clinically acute appendicitis was found in 78% and burst appendix in 22% of cases. Appendix was found retrocaecal in 67%, pelvic in 30% and pracaecal, subcaecal and postileal each comprises 1% of the patients. Finally, we found a significant correlation of pre-operative diagnosis with luminal contents (P<0.0001). Besides this, the findings of this study indicated that, the clinical diagnosis was concordance with intra-diagnosis in 84% of cases and discordant in 16% of cases. Conclusion: In this current study, pre-operative clinical diagnosis was concordance with intra-operative diagnosis in majority of the cases. So, we can conclude that, the surgeon should be careful about the pre-operative assessment of the cases in ........