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posted by chromas on Thursday September 27 2018, @09:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the now...on-to-the-tables-of-content dept.

After century of removing appendixes, docs find antibiotics can be enough:

After more than a century of slicing tiny, inflamed organs from people's guts, doctors have found that surgery may not be necessary after all—a simple course of antibiotics can be just as effective at treating appendicitis as going under the knife.

The revelation comes from a large, randomized trial out of Finland, published Tuesday, September 25, in JAMA.

Despite upending a long-held standard of care, the study's finding is not entirely surprising; it follows several other randomized trials over the years that had carved out evidence that antibiotics alone can treat an acute appendicitis. Those studies, however, left some dangling questions, including if the antibiotics just improved the situation temporarily and if initial drug treatments left patients worse off later if they did need surgery.

The new JAMA study, with its full, five-year follow-up, effectively cauterised those remaining issues. Nearly two-thirds of the patients randomly assigned in the study to get antibiotics for an uncomplicated appendicitis didn't end up needing surgery in the follow-up time, the Finnish authors, based at the University of Turku, report. And those drug-treated patients that did end up getting an appendectomy later were not worse off for the delay in surgery.

"This long-term follow-up supports the feasibility of antibiotic treatment alone as an alternative to surgery for uncomplicated acute appendicitis," the authors conclude.

The finding suggests that many appendicitis patients could be spared the risks of surgical procedures, such as infections. They may also be able to save money by not needing such an invasive procedure (although the study didn't compare costs), and they could reap the benefits of shorter treatment and recovery times. Researchers will have to collect more data to back up those benefits, though.

JAMA, 2018. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2018.13201


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @09:40PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @09:40PM (#741052)

    But surgery is more profitable. Docs like money like the rest of us.

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  • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @11:11PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @11:11PM (#741097)

    I'm a Soylentitled Boomer and I say let the poor die of appendicitis. Fewer poor people in the world means more money for me. And I mean all money in the world belongs to me. I'm sick of letting poor people have any of it.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 27 2018, @11:55PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Thursday September 27 2018, @11:55PM (#741105)

      Help the poor die faster: trick them into eating diseased duck while you eat the healthy chicken.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Friday September 28 2018, @01:21AM

    by Gaaark (41) on Friday September 28 2018, @01:21AM (#741143) Journal

    I dunno...I'm guessing the price of antibiotics just went up, because....why the hell not! PROFITS!

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 2) by ledow on Friday September 28 2018, @07:20AM (1 child)

    by ledow (5567) on Friday September 28 2018, @07:20AM (#741238) Homepage

    For civilised countries, an antibiotic in place of incredibly expensive invasive surgery is a fabulous advance that will save the country millions which can be put into helping more patients.

    But then, those countries don't *charge* people on the basis of how unlucky / predisposed to illness they might be...

    The US healthcare system is one of the most backward things I've ever witnessed among a supposedly intelligent population.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @03:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @03:00PM (#741357)

      The US healthcare system is one of the most backward things I've ever witnessed among a supposedly intelligent population.

      Its almost entirely a scam, like Fahrenheit 451 but with doctors being trained to make people sick (side effects) so that they need more healthcare. More and more people are doing "natural" healing BS and trying to avoid the dangerous healthcare system, thats why they are desperate to force people to pay for it via taxes.