Diagnostic Accuracy of Acute Appendicitis by Ultrasound in Hospital Emergency

Acute appendicitis is the most common medical condition requiring an immediate abdominal surgery. Medical ultrasound is a non-intrusive, non-expensive, and available diagnostic method. In this paper, the accuracy of this method was evaluated. This retrospective cohort study was performed at Ahvaz Imam Khomeini Hospital with 2,160 emergency department visits per year. The records of outpatients and inpatients 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. A total of 163 study subjects met the inclusion criteria, with the age range of 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 age group. 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 the more accurate planning of treatment and presenting patients with abdominal pains for surgery. In addition, non-surgical procedures could be administered for both genders and age groups with stronger certainty and confidence in negative medical ultrasound reports.