Published: 08/16/2012 - Updated: 11/05/2017
Author: S.M. Aiquipa
Even though it is a disease that increased among children and youth and can be solved with a quick surgery, appendicitis can cause death if the person doesn’t go at time to a health center, leading to a dangerous peritonitis.
It is important that everyone knows how to differentiate appendicitis from other diseases, because between the check and all the tests the doctor orders, you can spend more than four hours for a definitive diagnosis and appendicitis may be worsening.
Why it originates
In general, there isn't a study to define why appendicitis appear, in some cases is known to be caused by a blockage of the appendix by fecal material.
How to distinguish this disease
Appendicitis usually starts with abdominal pain around the navel, nausea, vomiting and poor appetite.
Then the pain will gradually increase to move to the right side of the abdomen, the patient may feel an urgent desire to urinate in an abnormal number of times. In cases where those affected are children, the most common symptoms are vomiting and a swollen abdomen, as well as intense pain, which may be intermittent to become more acute and persistent.
Medical Procedures
Once you go to the specialist, the diagnosis is given after you take various examinations among them: blood tests, urine tests, chest and abdominal radiographs and computed tomography (CT) of the affected area. Of course that depends on the doctor, perhaps a simple palpation of the abdomen may be enough to notice.
In that case, the solution to remove the appendix is surgery; this surgery is performed under general anesthesia.
Peritonitis
If you don't go on time for a diagnosis, the appendix that is the size of a finger and is attached to the large intestine in the lower right abdomen can burst and infect the whole body with bacteria and fecal material that could have been inside. This is known as peritonitis.
Patients in critical condition can survive if the infection hasn't spread throughout the body, but only in some areas where doctors can drain it, but that doesn't happen in all cases, some patients die within days from sepsis, or in other cases, death is usually fulminant.
Prevention
Can you prevent appendicitis? This is a common question, there aren’t exactly answers to know why the appendix becomes blocked and infected, there are some approaches that can reach the truth and that doctors often recommended.
The first thing is to have a healthy diet as possible, rich in fiber, which are those that allow greater movement of stool. And if it comes, you need to have a surgery.
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