Swedish researchers have suggested that antibiotics may be an alternative to appendectomy, the operation performed to treat appendicitis.
Appendix
Appendicitis is an acute inflammation of the appendix, characterized by symptoms such as abdominal pain, fever, and digestive problems. According to the American Journal of Epidemiology, Approximately 250,000 cases of appendicitis occur in the US yearly. To treat this disease, doctors now suggest an operation called appendectomy, which involves removing the infected appendix. But Swedish researchers are proposing a new way to treat appendicitis.
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Appendicitis treated with antibiotics: nearly 86% success rate.
Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden recently suggested that antibiotics may be as effective as surgery in most cases of acute appendicitis. This work was published in the journal JAMA Surgery.
For this research, the team examined data from 292 people who were hospitalized with appendicitis and who participated in two clinical trials in the 1990s. Patients were divided into two groups: those who received antibiotics for ten days and those who underwent surgery.
The results showed that only one person in the antibiotic group did not recover. In the second study, the success rate was 86% for patients treated with antibiotics. “More than half of the patients treated non-operatively did not relapse and avoided surgery for about two decades. “There is no evidence of long-term risks of non-operative treatment beyond the risk of recurrence of appendicitis,” the study authors said.
However, the study found that 40% of patients treated with antibiotics needed surgery later in life.
Despite the encouraging results, this research has its limitations. The data used are old. Therefore, the Swedish team could not accurately monitor the patients’ progress over the years.
References
Pátková B, Svenningsson A, Almström M, et al. Long-Term Outcome of Nonoperative Treatment of Appendicitis. JAMA Surg. Published online August 09, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamasurg.2023.2756
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