Evaluation Of Acute Appendicitis Findings In Children During The COVID-19 Pandemic Containment Process

Abstract

Introduction: To evaluate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients admitted to the pediatric emergency department and operated with the diagnosis of acute appendicitis in the pediatric surgery clinic. Metods: Files of patients who underwent appendectomy in the pediatric surgery clinic of Health Sciences University Adana City Training and Research Hospital between 16 March-16May 2019 and 16 March-16 May 2020 were retrospectively analyzed and divided into two groups respectively. Results: In the study, 95 patients in Group-1 (5.1% 95/1851) and 83 patients in Group-2 (11.5% 83/724) was operated for acute appendicitis. There was a significant difference between the two groups in terms of the number of patients who underwent appendectomy (p=0.001). A statistically significant difference was not found between the two groups when age, gender, duration of admission to hospital, preoperative laboratory values and duration of hospitalizasyon were compared. Perforated appendicitis was detected in 9 (9.5%) of the patients who underwent appendectomy in Group-1 and in 13 (15.7%) of the patients in Group-2 and it was not statistically significant (p=0.007). The mean size of appendix of the surgical pathology specimens was found to be 8.98±3.12 mm in Group-1 and 10.3±3.43 mm in Group-2 (p=0.007). Conclusion: Although the number of applications to pediatric emergency services decreased during the pandemic period, there was no decrease in the number of patients operated on due to appendicitis. In addition, it was found that the rate of perforated appendicitis increased. For this reason, it should be considered that the situations requiring emergency surgery do not decrease with the epidemic.

Keywords

• appendicitis
• covid-19
• child
• covid-19
• çocuk
• apandisit