Revisiting delayed appendectomy in patients with acute appendicitis

Evaluation of Limited English Proficiency in the Management and Outcomes of Appendicitis in Children

INTRODUCTION

Appendectomies are one of the most common pediatric surgical procedures. Limited English proficiency (LEP) may lead to disparities in health outcomes between English-proficient and LEP patients. This study assesses the association between LEP and postoperative outcomes in pediatric appendectomy.

METHODS

We analyzed records from the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program-Pediatric database from 2010 to 2023 under 18 y of age undergoing appendectomy at our institution. LEP was defined as the need for an interpreter. Primary outcomes were postoperative complications, length of stay (LOS), and postoperative emergency department (ED) visits within 30 d of discharge. Multivariable analyses were performed.

RESULTS

One thousand one hundred forty three children with appendicitis were identified, with 208 (18.2%) LEP and 935 (81.8%) English-proficient patients. LEP children were more likely to present with complicated appendicitis (42.8% versus 25.5%, P < 0.0001) and sepsis (34.1% versus 21.6%, P = 0.0003). LEP patients experience more serious (8.6% versus 3.9%, P = 0.02), overall complications (10.1% versus 5.5%, P = 0.006), and organ/surgical space site infections (8.2% versus 3.3%, P = 0.003). On multivariable analysis controlling for ethnicity and factors associated with complicated presentation, LEP was associated with increased postoperative ED visits (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.64, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.40-4.39), but not LOS (aOR 1.86, 95% CI = 0.87-3.97) or complications (aOR 1.76, 95% CI = 0.79-4.00).

CONCLUSIONS

LEP is independently associated with increased postoperative ED visits. Higher rates of complications and longer LOS may be related to increased complicated appendicitis at presentation. The role of cultural preferences and other social determinants of health that contribute to these disparities needs more investigation.

Applying an explainable machine learning model might reduce the number of negative appendectomies in pediatric patients with a high probability of acute appendicitis

The diagnosis of acute appendicitis and concurrent surgery referral is primarily based on clinical presentation, laboratory and radiological imaging. However, utilizing such an approach results in as much as 10-15% of negative appendectomies. Hence, in the present study, we aimed to develop a machine learning (ML) model designed to reduce the number of negative appendectomies in pediatric patients with a high clinical probability of acute appendicitis. The model was developed and validated on a registry of 551 pediatric patients with suspected acute appendicitis that underwent surgical treatment. Clinical, anthropometric, and laboratory features were included for model training and analysis. Three machine learning algorithms were tested (random forest, eXtreme Gradient Boosting, logistic regression) and model explainability was obtained. Random forest model provided the best predictions achieving mean specificity and sensitivity of 0.17 ± 0.01 and 0.997 ± 0.001 for detection of acute appendicitis, respectively. Furthermore, the model outperformed the appendicitis inflammatory response (AIR) score across most sensitivity-specificity combinations. Finally, the random forest model again provided the best predictions for discrimination between complicated appendicitis, and either uncomplicated acute appendicitis or no appendicitis at all, with a joint mean sensitivity of 0.994 ± 0.002 and specificity of 0.129 ± 0.009. In conclusion, the developed ML model might save as much as 17% of patients with a high clinical probability of acute appendicitis from unnecessary surgery, while missing the needed surgery in only 0.3% of cases. Additionally, it showed better diagnostic accuracy than the AIR score, as well as good accuracy in predicting complicated acute appendicitis over uncomplicated and negative cases bundled together. This may be useful in centers that advocate for the conservative treatment of uncomplicated appendicitis. Nevertheless, external validation is needed to support these findings.

WAYS TO IMPROVE THE RESULTS OF SURGICAL TREATMENT OF PATIENTS WITH ATYPICAL FORMS OF ACUTE APPENDICITIS

OBJECTIVE

The aim: To search for new and improvement of known methods of diagnosis and surgical treatment of atypical forms of acute appendicitis.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Materials and methods: There were analyzed the results of diagnosis and surgical treatment of 852 patients with atypical course of acute appendicitis, which amounted to 25.3% of the total number of patients in this category. Depending on the chosen diagnostic and treatment tactics, patients with acute atypical appendicitis were divided into two groups: control (n=423) and main (n=429).

RESULTS

Results: It was found that among atypical forms of acute appendicitis retrocecal location of the appendix is 61.2% of cases, pelvic - 24.3%, medial - 11.2%, subhepatic - 3.4%. Destructive forms of atypical acute appendicitis occurred in a total of 92.5% of cases, 77.7% of patients had various types of peritonitis.

CONCLUSION

Conclusions: Authors improved and tested a number of diagnostic (rectal thermometry, ethanol test) and operative methods for destructive forms of acute appendicitis complicated by typhoid (including laparoscopic). The proposed diagnostic and treatment algorithm allowed to optimize the treatment tactics of this category of patients and reduce the incidence of complications in the early postoperative period from 9.9% to 3.5% (p<0.001).