A Diagnostic Score (DS) Is a Powerful Tool in Diagnosis of Acute Appendicitis in Elderly Patients With Acute Abdominal Pain

BACKGROUND/AIM Although acute appendicitis (AA) in elderly patients is different from AA in younger patients, the accuracy of diagnostic scores (DSs) in detecting AA is rarely considered. PATIENTS AND METHODS A cohort of 470 AAP (acute abdominal pain) patients older than 50 years, including 224 women (53.7%) and 193 men (46.3%), were included in the study. The most significant diagnostic predictors were used to construct DS formulas for AA diagnosis with (Tax+) and without body temperature (Tax-). Meta-analytical techniques were used to calculate the summary Se and Sp estimates for each data sets (history-taking, findings, and DS formulas). RESULTS In SROC analysis, the AUC values for i) symptoms ii) signs and tests iii) DSTax- and iv) DSTax+ were as follows: i) AUC=0.658 (95%CI=0.601-0.709); ii) AUC=0.751 (95%CI=0.701-0.800), iii) AUC=0.977 (95%CI=0.942-1.000), and for iv) AUC=0.980 (95%CI=0.956-1.000). Using roccomp analysis for these AUC values, the differences were significant as follows: between i) and ii) p=0.0358; between i) and iii) p<0.0001; between i) and iv) p<0.0001; between ii) and iii) p<0.0001; between ii) and iv) p<0.0001; and between iii) and iv) p=0.682. CONCLUSION Similar to younger AA patients, the DS formula was superior to both the clinical history-taking and findings, and therefore, the use of DS should be an important part of the diagnostic decision tree of AA also in the elderly patients presenting with AAP.