Abstract
Objective
To describe the beliefs and preferences of pediatric surgeons regarding the emergent
nature of nonperforated appendicitis.
Methods
An electronic mailing was sent to all 1052 members of the American Pediatric Surgical
Association (APSA) inviting participation in a 26-item survey, which was administered
by Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com). Chi-square and Mann-Whitney tests were used for bivariate analysis. Spearman’s
rho was used for nonparametric correlation.
Results
Four hundred eighty-four pediatric surgeons (46%) responded to the survey. Few respondents
(4%) considered nonperforated appendicitis to be a surgical emergency. A minority
(14%) would come in from home to perform an overnight appendectomy. Most (92%) believe
that postponing overnight appendectomy until daytime does not result in a clinically
significant increase in perforation. Respondents endorsed surgeon fatigue (56%) and
limited operating room availability (56%) most often among factors that would make
them more likely to postpone surgery. Sixty-eight percent reported no departmental
guideline regarding delay of overnight appendectomy.
Conclusions
Most pediatric surgeons in our study believe nonperforated appendicitis is not a surgical
emergency and prefer to postpone overnight appendectomy.
Keywords
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: September 14, 2012
Accepted:
August 17,
2012
Received:
April 27,
2012
Footnotes
The authors have no financial relationships or conflicts of interest relevant to this article to disclose.
Contributor’s Statements: All authors participated in study design, analysis, and manuscript preparation.
Identification
Copyright
© 2012 Academic Pediatric Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
