Appendicitis – Don’t avoid the disease

  Appendicitis is the most common surgical emergency abdomen, accounting for about 10-15% of general surgery inpatients in general hospitals. In clinical work, I often encounter such appendicitis patients, the diagnosis is relatively clear, recommended hospital surgery, doctors repeatedly do work, but the patient because of one or another reasons, such as fear of pain, fear of spending money, fear of delay, etc., just do not do surgery, but require infusion or oral drug conservative treatment, that is, antibiotics to suppress the appendicitis. In fact, this concept is very wrong. Please see the example of Mr. Li.  Mr. Li is a department manager of an IT company. One day a few months ago, he suddenly felt pain in the upper middle abdomen, which shifted to the lower right abdomen a few hours later, and developed a fever with a temperature of 38.0℃, so he went to a nearby hospital, where the doctor considered it to be appendicitis and suggested Mr. Li to have surgery, but Mr. Li asked for conservative treatment considering his busy schedule. After 5 days of infusion and anti-infection treatment, Mr. Li’s pain was not so heavy, but his right lower abdomen was always vaguely painful with fever of 37.8℃-38.2℃, which seriously affected his work, and then he went to the hospital to check the ultrasound of the right lower abdomen and found that an inflammatory mass had formed in the right lower abdomen, which missed the timing of surgery.  According to Qianli Abdominal Surgery, acute appendicitis is best treated surgically, and conservative treatment should be performed only if there are no surgical conditions. If surgery is not performed, the infection can be controlled in most patients with appendicitis with conservative treatment. However, after acute inflammation, the fibrous tissue of the appendiceal wall, partial narrowing or total occlusion of the appendiceal lumen, and the formation of adhesions around the appendix are often left behind, making the appendiceal lumen poorly emptied and easily triggering another attack of appendicitis, which is transformed into chronic appendicitis. If antibiotics are used every time, it will increase the resistance of bacteria, resulting in more and more high-grade antibiotics, and the cumulative cost of each infusion is more expensive than surgery. The recurrent inflammation makes the appendix adhere seriously to the surrounding tissues, increasing the difficulty and risk of future surgery. In addition, a small number of patients with appendicitis cannot effectively control the infection by conservative treatment, leading to appendiceal perforation, formation of periappendiceal abscess or diffuse peritonitis, and in some cases, the infection may spread to form septic sepsis, which is life-threatening. Once a periappendiceal abscess or diffuse peritonitis is formed, the timing of surgery is missed, making treatment more difficult and painful for the patient, increasing the length of hospitalization and medical costs. Appendectomy itself is not a complicated operation, it is because of the hesitation of some patients who wait until the pain is unbearable before they resolve to have the operation, which has missed the best time for the operation, making the operation more difficult and increasing the chance of complications. Appendectomy itself is a relatively mature small and medium-sized surgery, with little chance of serious complications and a hospital stay of less than a week. The appendix itself is a disposable organ and its removal has no adverse effects on the body. With the progress of science and technology, more and more hospitals are using laparoscopy for appendectomy, which requires only 3 small holes in the belly, causing very little trauma to the patient and less chance of complications, and the patient can be discharged from the hospital within two or three days after the operation. Therefore, do not be shy about appendicitis, once the diagnosis of acute appendicitis is relatively clear, do not hesitate to make up your mind to do the surgery.