DIAGNOSIS
Review: symptoms, signs, and lab tests have moderate accuracy for detecting appendicitis in children
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
G Bundy
Dr D G Bundy, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA; dbundy3@jhmi.edu
REVIEW PROCESS
how accurate are symptoms, signs, and laboratory tests for diagnosing appendicitis in children with abdominal pain?
Medline (to March 2007), Cochrane Library, textbooks, and reference lists.
fully published studies in English that evaluated the accuracy of medical history, physical examination, or basic laboratory tests for diagnosing appendicitis in children, using independent, blinded comparison with a gold standard—surgical pathological findings, clinical observation, or follow-up (level of evidence 1–3). 25 studies were included: 1 level 1 study (n = 246) of unselected children presenting to the emergency department with undifferentiated abdominal pain (appendicitis prevalence 10%) and 24 level 3 studies (n = 5590) of selected patients with suspected appendicitis (appendicitis prevalence 25–89%).
sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative likelihood ratios (LRs).
MAIN RESULTS
The table shows the results.
CONCLUSION
The most useful single feature for diagnosing appendicitis in
Columbia University, New York City, New York, USA
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
-
Pain (neurology)
-
Clinical diagnostic tests
-
Radiology (diagnostics)
-
General practice / family medicine
-
Radiology
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
