Gudas Ravinder1, Keerthi Sunil Kumar2, Boda Kumaraswamy3
BACKGROUND
Accurate clinical diagnosis and timely surgical intervention are the two important
events that help the surgeon in the management of acute appendicitis. Two
diagnostic score systems that help in avoiding the removal of normal appendix are
reviewed in this study. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the sensitivity
and specificity of Alvarado score (AS) and Appendicitis inflammatory response
scores (AIRS) in the diagnosis of acute appendicitis (AA) and correlate their
efficacy in the management of acute appendicitis as per the diagnostic scores
used.
METHODS
This was a cross-sectional clinical study. 73 patients who attended the emergency
ward for clinical features of acute appendicitis were included in the study. Clinical
examination included the diagnostic tools 1. The Alvarado score, 2. Appendicitis
Inflammatory Response score. Based on their score a provisional diagnosis was
made among the patients. All the data was classified and analysed.
RESULTS
The positive predictive value was 63/73 (86.30 %) with Alvarado diagnostic tool
and 66/73 (90.41 %) with AIS diagnostic tool. The false positive values using
Alvarado system was 06.84 % and 04.10 % with AIS system. The true negative
rate of diagnosis of acute appendicitis in this study was 09.58 %.
CONCLUSIONS
Both Alvarado and AIS diagnostic tools were simple and accurate in the early
diagnosis of acute appendicitis in the adult population. Both the tools are highly
sensitive and specific in nature.
