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Diagnostic Role of Ultrasonography in Acute Appendicitis: A Study at a Tertiary Care Hospital

Subash K C1,, Abhijit De2, Mahesh Pathak1, Brijesh Sathian3

1Department of Radiodiagnosis & Imaging, Manipal Teaching Hospital, Pokhara, Nepal

2Medical Officer, Park Clinic, Kolkata, India

3Department of Community Medicine, Manipal College of Medical Sciences, Pokhara, Nepal

American Journal of Public Health Research. 2015, 3(5A), 23-28. DOI: 10.12691/ajphr-3-5A-6
Published online: August 25, 2017

Abstract

Acute appendicitis is commonest cause of acute abdomen necessitating emergency abdominal surgery. Although diagnosis is still largely considered to be a clinical one, ultrasound is established as easily available, less time consuming and very accurate at timely diagnosis of acute appendicitis largely reducing complications as well as negative laparotomies. Due to development of high frequency transducers and better resolution, ultrasound is highly specific and sensitive in diagnosis of acute appendicitis. This study was done to establish the diagnostic role of ultrasound in acute appendicitis in western region of Nepal. Total number of 125 patients were included in the study from May 2013 to May 2015. Findings on ultrasound were finally compared with histopathological report of appendices removed on surgery. Those cases with alternate diagnosis were followed up and proved with other means of investigation. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and overall accuracy of ultrasound in diagnosis of acute appendicitis in our study were found to be 95.12 %, 88.88 %, 97.5% , 80% and 82 % respectively.

Keywords:

appendicitis, ultrasonography, specificity, Nepal
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