Abstract
Objective: To investigate whether Rovsing’s sign in the diagnosis of appendicitis is described and applied inaccurately in current literature, scientific papers and books, quantify the problem and investigate the cause of this error.Background: The way Rovsing’s sign is elicited is not described uniformly throughout the literature.Methods: A Pubmed search was conducted and 1069 individual studies were searched for the use of Rovsing’s sign. 53 studies were included in this study, of these 14 described the way the sign was executed. Additionally 3 current English (text)books on surgery, 3 German (text)books on surgery and 2 German books on anatomy were analyzed. The descriptions in studies and books were compared to the original publication by Niels Thorkild Rovsing in 1907.Results: No included study which described the way Rovsing’s sign is elicited gave a correct description. Of the 3 English (text)books on surgery none described it accurately, of the 5 German (text)books all yielded a correct description of this sign.Conclusion: Rovsing’s sign is used erroneously in clinical practice and medical research and most likely already taught incorrectly to most medical students. All statistical data available on this sign must be questioned and reinvestigated in future well‐designed studies to assess the actual value of Rovsing’s sign in the diagnosis of appendicitis.
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