Impact of abdominal radiography on surgical approach among patients with acute abdomen attending emergency ward

Introduction: Abdominal radiography is an important method for acute abdomen cases and it is usually used to determine surgical approaches. This study was performed to determine the effect of abdominal radiography in the surgical approach among patients with acute abdomen attending the emergency ward of Rasool-Akram Hospital. Methods: In this comparative cross-sectional study, 147 consecutive patients with acute abdomen attending the emergency ward of Rasool-Akram Hospital were enrolled. The effect of abdominal radiography on surgical approach was assessed in them.The collected data were analyzed in SPSS software (version 13) using independent t-test and Fisher’sexact test. The significance level for all tests was considered less than 0.05. Results: In this study, radiography was effective on surgical approach in 63.3% of cases and it proposed peritonitis in 68% of cases. The impact was associated with lower age (P=0.0001), shorter surgery duration (P=0.003), and male sex (P=0.0001). Conclusions: According to the results, it may be concluded that clinical assessment has a pivotal role for diagnosis of peritonitis, and if it is positive, no additional procedure is required whereby the operation should be carried out. Abdominal radiography should be used for cases with equivocal results in clinical assessment.