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Query: UMLS:C0085693 (acute appendicitis)
 3,606 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

This article discusses the findings of a study of pre-adolescent children to determine if the mode of presentation of appendicitis had changed over the past 10 years, if the incidence of perforations decreased with age, and if diagnosis related groups (DRGs) impacted the length of hospital stay. The charts of 42 children under the age of 12 years who were discharged from two inner-city hospitals with a diagnosis of acute appendicitis from 1980 to 1989 were reviewed. There were 20 blacks and 22 whites, 26 males and 16 females with an average age of 7.31 years (range: 2 to 11 years). Over 95% of patients presented with right lower quadrant pain, 78% with guarding, 80% with a positive psoas sign, 93% with a positive Rovsing's sign, and 65% with rectal tenderness. Over 85% of patients had a history of nausea, vomiting, and anorexia. The mean duration of pain was 52.8 hours and the mean temperature was 99.6 degrees F. The mean white blood cell count was 18,176 +/- 4682 for whites versus 14,615 +/- 5459 for blacks. At surgery 15/42 (36%) of patients had a perforation, 11 of whom had positive wound cultures. Escherichia coli was recovered in all 11 of these patients. The average duration of pain in the perforated group was 50.9 hours, and the average age was 7 years. Eleven of these patients had normal bowel sounds on admission. Only 31% of the total cohort had a fecalith identified by pathology. The average postoperative length of stay was 6.5 +/- 2.5 days before the initiation of DRGs and 7.5 +/- 3 days afterward.
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PMID:Appendicitis in children: a continuing clinical challenge. 140 59

This is a prospective study on 123 randomly selected patients admitted with the diagnosis of acute appendicitis. The value of rebound tenderness as a clinical diagnostic tool was statistically compared to those of some other physical signs; namely guarding, rigidity and Rovsing's sign. Rebound tenderness was found to carry the highest sensitivity (94.7%), negative predictive value (81.3%), reliability (49.1%), and association with histological diagnosis (P < 0.05). However, its specificity and positive predictive value was not significantly different from those of other physical signs. It is concluded that, in contradistinction to some previously published reports, our study emphasizes the role of rebound tenderness in the clinical diagnosis of acute appendicitis.
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PMID:Value of rebound tenderness in acute appendicitis. 758 44