Computed tomography for diagnosis of acute appendicitis in adults

Summary

A Cochrane review «Computed tomography for diagnosis of acute appendicitis in adults»1 «Rud B, Vejborg TS, Rappeport ED et al. Computed tomography for diagnosis of acute appendicitis in adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2019(11):CD009977. »1 included 64 studies with a total of 10.280 participants (4583 with and 5697 without acute appendicitis). At the median prevalence of appendicitis (0.43), the probability of having appendicitis following a positive CT result was 0.92 (95% CI 0.90 to 0.94), and the probability of having appendicitis following a negative CT result was 0.04 (95% CI 0.03 to 0.05). In subgroup analyses according to contrast enhancement, summary sensitivity was higher for CT with intravenous contrast (0.96, 95% CI 0.92 to 0.98), CT with rectal contrast (0.97, 95% CI 0.93 to 0.99), and CT with intravenous and oral contrast enhancement (0.96, 95% CI 0.93 to 0.98) than for unenhanced CT (0.91, 95% CI 0.87 to 0.93).