Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Nov 15;8(11):3700-3705.
doi: 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_740_19. eCollection 2019 Nov.

Survey of efficacy of pediatric appendicitis score in Iranian patients less than 18 years old referred to the emergency department

Hojjat Derakhshanfar  1 , Elham Pourbakhtyaran  1 , Samane Rahimi  1 , Samira Sayyah  1 , Fereshteh Karbasian  1 , Zahra Soltantooyeh  2 , Shahrzad Fallah  1
Affiliations

Survey of efficacy of pediatric appendicitis score in Iranian patients less than 18 years old referred to the emergency department

Hojjat Derakhshanfar et al. J Family Med Prim Care. .

Abstract

Introduction: Abdominal pain, in particular appendicitis, is a common cause of emergency department visits in children. Therefore, early diagnosis is very important. There are different scoring systems for the diagnosis of appendicitis. This study is the first study to evaluate the performance and accuracy of pediatric appendicitis score (PAS) in Iranian children with abdominal pain in emergency departments.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of children under 18 years with suspected appendicitis who were referred to the emergency medicine department of hospitals affiliated to SBMU during 2015. Acute appendicitis was determined according to pathological findings, and final PAS scores were calculated for all children. With statistical analysis, comparison between two groups was calculated and the diagnostic accuracy of PAS score was estimated.

Results: 88 children with mean age of 10.5 ± 3 were studied. According to clinical examination 58 of the children were suspected to have acute appendicitis and 30 others were healthy. In current study, the diagnostic accuracy and precision of PAS at cutoff of 5.5 in patients younger than 18 years admitted to the emergency department with suspected acute appendicitis was 91% and 92%, respectively. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value were 93.88%, 86.21% and 92%, 89.29%, respectively.

Conclusions: The results of current study showed that PAS has high diagnostic predictive value for the diagnosis of acute appendicitis in children under 18 years and due to the advantages listed for this score, its use is recommended for children in emergencies.

Keywords: Diagnostic accuracy; emergency; pediatric; pediatric appendicitis score (PAS).

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research reported.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
ROC curve for PAS score
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Sivit CJ, Siegel MJ, Applegate KE, Newman KD. When appendicitis is suspected in children. Radiographics. 2001;21:247–88. - PubMed
    1. Kharbanda AB, Vazquez-Benitez G, Ballard DW, Vinson DR, Chettipally UK, Kene MV, et al. Development and validation of a novel pediatric appendicitis risk calculator (pARC) Pediatrics. 2018;141:e20172699. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Balthazar EJ. Appendicitis: Prospective evaluation with high resolution CT. Radiology. 1991;180:21–4. - PubMed
    1. Ohmann C, Yang Q, Franke C The Abdominal Pain Study Group. Diagnostic scores for acute appendicitis. Eur J Surg. 1995;161:273–81. - PubMed
    1. Fenyö G. Routine use of a scoring system for decision-making in suspected acute appendicitis in adults. Acta Chir Scand. 1987;153:545–51. - PubMed