SGEM#345: Checking In, Checking Out for Non-Operative Treatment of Appendicitis

Date: September 16th, 2021 Reference: Sippola et al. Effect of Oral Moxifloxacin vs Intravenous Ertapenem Plus Oral Levofloxacin for Treatment of Uncomplicated Acute Appendicitis. The APPAC II Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA 2021 Guest Skeptic: Dr. Rob Leeper is an assistant professor of surgery at Western University and the London Health Sciences Center.  His practice is in trauma, emergency general surgery, and critical care with an academic interest in ultrasound and medical simulation. Rules of SGEM Journal Club Case: A 23-year-old man with CT confirmed uncomplicated appendicitis, mild abdominal pain, stable clinical signs, and essentially normal laboratory investigations has just concluded his bedside consultation with the on-call general surgery team.  The patient and surgeons have had an evidence-informed discussion and have arrived at a mutually agreed upon decision to proceed with non-operative treatment of his appendicitis.  The patient is recommended to undergo admission to hospital for serial observation and intravenous antibiotics.  The patient asks; “gosh doc, if this disease is so mild why can’t I just go home and take antibiotics by mouth?”. Background: The appendix is a structure about as long as your pinkie finger that hangs off the beginning of the colon, in the right lower quadrant of your abdomen. There are lots of theories about subtle functions of the appendix, but its most prominent role is to become inflamed or infected in approximately 7% of people. Usually appendicitis occurs because the lumen, or inside, of the appendix is obstructed by something. Often that is a piece of stool called a fecalith, but other times it can be lymph tissue or another process we may never actually identify. This causes the pressure in the appendix to increase eventually obstructing venous outflow and then arterial inflow. We used to assume that this was an ordered progression that always leads to appendiceal rupture in a stepwise fashion, but we now think that there is more of a spectrum of severity based on individual anatomic and other factors. While the presentation of appendicitis can vary from patient to patient, as our emergency medicine colleagues know well, most patients are not diffusely peritonitic or systemically unwell. Before we had things like surgery or antibiotics, appendicitis carried up to a 50% case fatality rate. Luckily now, with these treatments the mortality rate is almost zero. For the last 135 years we have treated appendicitis with an appendectomy, which is now almost always performed in laparoscopic fashion. A laparoscopic appendectomy involves a general anesthetic, making three small incisions between 1 and 2 cm in length; and the operation usually takes somewhere between 30 to 60 minutes. Most patients go home the same day or the next morning, either with a short course of antibiotics or with none after surgery. Most patients who have this surgery are back to work and their usual routine at around the two-week mark. The chance of requiring additional procedures is quite low unless we find that the appendix has already perforated. It is a good, and generally very safe operation, with a high rate of patient satisfaction. Omar et al  published a study in 2008 showing just how safe laparoscopic appendectomies have become. They found in over 230,000 UK patients the death rate was less than half compared to the open procedure (0.64% vs 0.29%; p<0.001). Nonoperative treatment of appendicitis (NOTA) was first described in the 1940s and moved into the public consciousness when