Getting Rid of Appendicitis Remains Effective Through Surgery
by Maejoy Tutor in Diseases on May 28, 2011
French researchers suggest that surgery is still the most effective treatment in curing appendicitis. This is in contrast to some researchers believing that antibiotics can cure appendicitis.
The researchers say that uncomplicated appendicitis may be treated with antibiotics alone, but complicated appendicitis cannot be treated by just antibiotics. Since the appendicitis is perforated because of complications, then it requires surgery. However, the researchers cannot still distinguish between what is complicated and not.
Dr. Corinne Vons, the lead researcher at the Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris and Universite Paris XI shared, “With the current technology, it is not possible to distinguish between uncomplicated and complicated appendicitis.” Dr. Vons also indicated that maybe in the future, with the improvement of imaging, everything will be possible.
Dr. Vons research team has followed 239 patients who are diagnosed with uncomplicated acute appendicitis to be observed and analyzed for the study. These patients were randomly assigned to be treated with antibiotics or an appendectomy, based on the CT scans they had. Within the 30-day following treatment, the team looked for cases having peritonitis, “an inflammation of the wall of the abdominal cavity.”
The results show that those who were treated with antibiotics, that is 3 grams of amoxicillin plus clavulanic acid taken within 8 to 15 days, significantly had a higher incident of peritonitis with 8 percent compared with those who had surgery having only 2 percent.
However, there are several researchers who disagreed with the results. Dr. Rodney Mason, an expert and an associate professor of surgery at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine said that there are a lot of biases in the recent study. He counted that the researchers gave the wrong antibiotic, which already have gained resistance to E. coli, the most common germ associated with appendicitis. He also added that two-thirds of the patients did not need the surgery.
After all of these arguments, experts say that this study is not likely to end just here. It may also brought up debates regarding such complicated topic.
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