Appendicitis is an infection that is best treated with surgery, but a new study finds that giving antibiotics to patients may work just fine.
The study conducted by researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital led by Dr. Peter Minneci and Dr. Katherine Deans of the Center for Surgical Outcomes Research at The Research Institute, CBS News reported.
The Wednesday published study found in JAMA Surgery stated that antibiotics alone can successfully treat uncomplicated appendicitis in children. This would mean that treating appendicitis won't require high expenses and will allow patients to recover in a short time.
Removing the appendix is the treatment of choice for the infection, but according to Deans, doctors have noticed that patients would feel better the next day if they were given antibiotics.
To find out how effective antibiotics are in treating appendicitis when given alone, the researchers enlisted 102 young patients between seven and 17 years old who visited the hospital between October 2012 and March 2013 for appendicitis.
Families were asked if their children should go through surgery or simply take antibiotics. There were 37 families who decided that their children should receive antibiotic treatment, while 65 families chose surgery.
The antibiotics group was given antibiotic intravenous infusion for 24 hours, as well as oral antibiotics given for ten days after the patients were discharged from the hospital.
About 95 percent of the members of the group had improved condition in just 24 hours. They were then followed up one year later, and 75 percent said their appendicitis did not recur and they never even had surgery.
Despite the promise shown by antibiotics in treating appendicitis, Minneci said that the study did not intend to point out that one treatment is superior to the other, Reuters Health reported.
Instead, the study only indicated that antibiotics can be an alternative treatment for simple cases of the infection.
In an editorial accompanying the study, Dr. Russell Jennings, a surgeon at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts, said that patients still need to be evaluated by a surgeon if antibiotics are necessary or not.
"It's important you don't change the quality of care," Jennings told Reuters Health.
