Diagnostic Accuracy of Acute Appendicitis by Ultrasound in Hospital Emergency

Background Acute appendicitis is the most common medical condition requiring immediate abdominal surgery.Medical ultrasound is a non-intrusive, non-expensive and available diagnostic method. In this study, the accuracy of ultrasound in diagnosis of acute appendicitis in hospital emergency was evaluated. Materials and Methods This retrospective cohort study was performed at Ahvaz Imam Khomeini hospital (Ahvaz city, Iran). The records of outpatient and inpatient of this hospital were studied to extract demographic information about the patients and radiological reports indicating the occurrence or exclusion of acute appendicitis and post-appendectomy report to allow for results comparison. Patient from 5-70 years included, with clinical suspicious to acute appendicitis, pathologic report also reviewed as gold standard of diagnosis. Results A total of 163 study subjects met the inclusion criteria,theage of the subjects ranged from 6 to 63 years. The accuracy, sensitivity and specificity were 98.1, 96 and 100%, respectively. The positive predictive value was 100%, while the negative predictive value was 82.35%. Diagnostic accuracy was 100% for the under-15 age group and 94.06% for the above 15 years age group. Conclusion The results showed that the medical ultrasound reports could be considered more credible in diagnosing acute appendicitis in under-15 male subjects which paves the way for more accurate planning of treatment and presenting patients with abdominal pains for surgery.