This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (54)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Study of 300 Cases After the Age of 60

Pekka Peltokallio, MD; Kari Jauhiainen, MD

AMA Arch Surg. 1970;100(2):140-143.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Acute appendicitis is, above all, a disease of young persons, which causes the possibility of its occurrence in aged patients often to be overlooked. Delayed diagnosis of appendicitis is not infrequent in their case for this reason.

Every 15th human (7%) becomes affected with acute appendicitis at some time of life. After the age of 50, the risk of this disease is only 1:35 for women and 1:50 for men.

The manifestation of appendicitis in aged persons has some special features which may contribute to delayed diagnosis. On the other hand, rapid diagnosis of their appendicitis would be particularly desirable because in aged people concomitant, complicating diseases are not rare and their physiological reserves are often too small to tolerate any delay. It follows that early diagnosis of this disease in aged persons possesses great significance in regard to surgery, hospitalization, and occurrence of complications, as well as mortality.

Material . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Helsinki

From the Second Surgical Clinic, University of Helsinki, Helsinki.

Footnotes
Submitted for publication Aug 18, 1969.

Reprint requests to Meilahden Sairaala, Helsinki Haartmanink 4, Finland (Dr. Peltokallio).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?