According to a new Finnish study from The Journal of the American Medical Association, antibiotics could be just as successful as surgery for dealing with appendicitis in a majority of patients. Appendectomy, the surgical removal of the appendix, has been the standard, go-to treatment for appendicitis for over a century. With some 300,000 Americans affected by appendicitis per year, questions have been growing about the routine use of surgery, especially when it comes to uncomplicated cases.
The trial examined 530 patients aged 18 to 60 years who suffered from uncomplicated appendicitis and agreed to be assigned a treatment for their affliction—either an open appendectomy or a combination of IV and oral antibiotics. At the one year follow up, the antibiotics were found to be nearly as effective as the surgery to treat appendicitis—about 75% of the antibiotics group recovered from this treatment alone and the other 25% who did need surgery experienced no added complications from waiting.
While the study presents a good case for antibiotic treatment over open surgery when confronted with uncomplicated cases of appendicitis, the researchers failed to take laparoscopic appendectomies, a minimally invasive alternative to the open appendectomy, into account. However, an American group of researchers are now planning their own appendicitis treatment study that will examine less invasive surgeries and less powerful antibiotics, which have the advantages of lower infection rates, shorter hospital and recovery times, and lower levels of pain.
If you believe you or a loved one have suffered injuries or a wrongful death as a result of a doctor or nurses negligence, please call Gerald Thurswell of Thurswell Law at (866) 354-5544. We will get your medical records and investigate this case at no charge to you. If and only if we believe malpractice is committed and we are successful, you pay a fee only if we collect money for you.
For full article see:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2320315
To view an accompanying editorial:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2320296
