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Information On Appendicitis

By: Peter Hutch

Appendicitis is an inflammation of the appendix. Once it starts, there is no effective medical therapy, so appendicitis is considered a medical emergency. When treated promptly, most patients recover without difficulty. If treatment is delayed, the appendix can burst, causing infection and even death. Appendicitis is the most common acute surgical emergency of the abdomen. Anyone can get appendicitis, but it occurs most often between the ages of 10 and 30.

The appendix is a narrow tubular pouch that is attached to the intestines. When the appendix is blocked, it becomes inflamed and results in the condition known as appendicitis. If the blockage continues, the inflamed tissue becomes infected with bacteria and begins to die from a lack of blood supply, which finally results in the appendix bursting.

Causes

Appendicitis means inflammation of the appendix. It is thought that appendicitis begins when the opening from the appendix into the cecum becomes blocked. The blockage may be due to a build-up of thick mucus within the appendix or to stool that enters the appendix from the cecum.

The exact cause of appendicitis is not known. However, if faecal matter blocks the lumen of the appendix, the secretions keep collecting and may get infected causing appendicitis.

Symptoms

Appendicitis typically begins with a vague pain in the middle of the abdomen often near the umbilicus (navel or "belly button"). The pain slowly moves to the right lower abdomen (toward the right hip) over 24 hours. In the classic description, abdominal pain is accompanied with nausea, vomiting, lack of appetite, and fever. All of these symptoms, however, occur in fewer than half of people who develop appendicitis. More commonly, people with appendicitis often have any combination of these symptoms.

Appendicitis Diagnosis

Your doctor will ask you questions about what symptoms you have, when they started, and what was happening before the pain began. Your doctor will press on your belly to see where the pain is. He or she will take your temperature to see if you have a fever, which is a sign of infection. You also may have blood tests to look for signs of infection.

Treatment

The treatment begins by keeping the patient from eating or drinking anything, even water, in preparation for surgery. An intravenous drip is used to hydrate the patient. Antibiotics given intravenously such as cefuroxime and metronidazole may be administered early to help kill bacteria and thus reduce the spread of infection in the abdomen and postoperative complications in the abdomen or wound. Equivocal cases may become more difficult to assess with antibiotic treatment and benefit from serial examinations. If the stomach is empty (no food in the past six hours) general anaesthesia is usually used. Otherwise, spinal anaesthesia may be used.

In this technique, the surgeon will make a number of small incisions in your abdomen, through which the surgeon will insert a small tube that contains a light and a tiny video camera (a laparoscope).

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