Pediatric Appendicitis: Factors Affecting Postappendectomy Morbidity

Kum Ja Choi

Corresponding author: Kum-ja Choi. Department of Surgery, College of Medicine, Ewha Womans University

Copyright ⓒ 1989. Ewha Womans University School of Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Jul 24, 2015

Abstract

In the pediatric age group, appendicitis is the most common condition requiring abdominal surgery that continues to be characterized by a high morbidity rate despite a significant decrease in the mortality rate.

A study was performed to identify factors associated with postoperative complications in 130 children with acute appendicitis during 4 years period from Jan. 1985 to Dec. 1988.

The results of this study indicate the following :

1) Simple appendicitis group was 80 cases(61.5%), complicated group was 50 cases(38.5%), and male to female ratio was 1.2 to 1.

2) Postappendectomy morbidity was 2.5% in simple appendicitis group and 44% in complicated appendicitis group.

3) Significant predictors of the complicated appendicitis were 1) age under 9 year-old, 2) duration of symptoms over 24 hours, 3) preoperative body temperature over 38℃, 4) leukocytosis over 15,000 WBC/mm³.

4) Duration of symptoms was the factor most closely associated with postappendectomy complications in the complicated appendicitis.

5) Preoperative antibiotics did not appreciably influence the incidence of complications in the complicated appendicitis. Results presented illustrate that postappendectomy morbidity is strongly influenced by the status itself of appendicitis.