Abstract

Objective: Acute appendicitis is one of the most common causes of abdominal pain in patients referring to the emergency department, and appendectomy is one of the most commonly used emergency medical surgeries worldwide. If it is not diagnosed on time, it may cause morbidity with important complications such as perforation. Correct diagnosis can be made in most cases. However, compared with adults, diagnosis is more difficult in children who are anxious, restless and painful and who have not enough communication skills for expressing their complaints well. The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of abdominal ultrasonography (USG) in the diagnosis of acute appendicitis in pediatric patients.

Material  and  Methods: Patients between 1-18 years who were operated between 2012and 2020 with the estimated diagnosis of appendicitis in pediatric surgery clinic, and who have had USG examination before surgery, were included in the study. Demographic indicators, USG findings at the time of diagnosis, surgical data and pathology reports were evaluated retrospectively.

Results: A total of 500 patients, 203 (40%) girls and 297 (60%) boys, were evaluated. The mean age of the patients was 10.1 ± 3.9 years. According to preoperative USG data; 30% of patients had normal appendicitis and 70% had acute appendicitis (10% of them perforated). In terms of pathological diagnosis, normal appendix tissue (negative appendectomy) was found in 8% of the operated patients. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of ultrasound were 71.96%, 48.78% and 70.06%, respectively. Positive and negative predictive values were 94.03% and 13.42%, respectively.

Conclusion: According to the results, it is considered that USG is an easy and inexpensive method in the diagnosis of acute appendicitis in children, but its reliability is still controversial. Diagnostic accuracy was higher in patients where ultrasonography reported as in favor of appendicitis compared to those reported against appendicitis. We consider that the clinical findings of the patients should be reviewed more carefully and if necessary further examination should be performed in patients who do not have appendicitis in the ultrasonographic evaluation.

Keywords: Ultrasonografi, Apandisit, Duyarlılık;, Özgünlük, Çocuklar

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Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite

1.
Gezer HÖ, Temiz A, Ezer SS, İnce E, Demir Kekeç Ş, Hasbay B. Acute Appendicitis in Children; Assessment of Diagnostic Reliability  of Ultrasonography. Turk J Pediatr Dis [Internet]. 2021 Mar. 30 [cited 2025 Aug. 23];15(2):123-8. Available from: https://turkjpediatrdis.org/article/view/804