Abstract
The present study was designed to assess the efficacy of our strategy, which was based on interval appendectomy (IA) followed after conservative therapy, for the treatment of acute appendicitis. Four hundred and five patients with acute appendicitis have been treated at our hospital, of these, there were 37 patients who had undergone an emergency operation (three patients were judged as ASA-PS class4, 34 patients requested the operation by themselves) and 368 patients who improved after conservative therapy without surgery. IA was associated with a few cases of conversion to an extended operation and a significantly lower percentage of postoperative complications. We investigated 29 patients who had undergone an emergency operation compared with 145 cases of IA. Eleven of the 29 emergency patients (37.9%) had some form of complication, but in IA, complications occurred in only five of 145 patients (3.4%). Multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) seemed to be useful for the prediction of outcomes in emergency operation. IA for acute appendicitis was considered superior to other therapeutic procedures.
