Right lower quadrant abdominal pain is the prime symptom of acute appendicitis. The surgical treatment of appendicitis is one of the great public health advancement of the last 150 years.
The objective of this study is to correlate the duration of right lower quadrant abdominal pain with the clinical stage (Pathologic diagnosis) on patients who underwent appendectomy at MCU-FDTMF Hospital from January 2006 to December 2006.
This is a cross-sectional study. There were one hundred and ninety four (194) patients who presented with right lower quadrant abdominal pain and underwent appendectomy. One hundred and eighty six (186/194) had acute appendicitis during surgery and eight (8/194) patients with normal appendix. The 3 most common diagnoses on patients with normal appendices were pelvic inflammatory disease, ovarian torsion and urinary tract infection. The total number of patients who underwent appendectomy surpassed the required sample size of at least 130 observations. A Chi-square test was used for univirate analysis of data.
The study revealed that right lower quadrant abdominal pain of acute appendicitis < 12 hours was either congestive or suppurative (94%) stage and for pain duration of > 24 hours increased the likelihood of a ruptured appendicitis (98.5%).
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