All issues > Volume 35(1); 1992

Original Article

J Korean Pediatr Soc. 1992;35(1):51-59. Published online January 15, 1992.

Acute Appendicitis in Children

Min Hang MH Kim¹, Tae Geun TG Soon¹, Jae Sun JS Park¹, Chung Han CH Lee²

¹Department of Pediatrics, Kosin Medical College, Pusan, Korea
²Department of Surgery, Kosin Medical College, Pusan, Korea

Abstract

A retrospective study was performed with 61 cases of acute appendicitis in children under the age of fifteen years in Kosin Medical Center from January, 1980 to April, 1991. All the patients had received surgery and biopsies of resected appendices were proved to the histological diagnosis of appendicitis The following results were obtained 1) The overall incidence of acute appendicitis in children among all the patients during the same period was 4.7%. The age distribution of child appendicitis was most common in the age group between 11 to 15 years and the ratio of male to female was 1.1:1. 2) Common symptoms were nausea/vomiting(68.9%), RLQ pain(63.9%), fever/chill(36.1%), diarrhea(32.8%). Four high risk factors suggesting the perforated appendicitis were diffuse abdominal tenderness, duration of symptom over 48 hours, fever over 38C, leukocytosis over 15.000/㎣. 3) Radiologic findings, laboratory findings and barium enema were helpful to the diagnose of appendicitis. 4) The most common pathologic type was suppurative appendicitis(70.5%) and the rate of perforation was 8%. 5) The operative mortality was nil. The overall rate of postoperative complication was 6.5%, and of would infection was 4.9%. The majority of morbidity was encountered in the perforated cases. 6) The mean duration of hospitalization of all the perforated cases and all cases with postoperative wound infection was about 2 times longer than that of the cases without such conditions.

Keywords :Acute Appeudicitis