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Studies have revealed that antibiotics can successfully treat mild to moderately serious appendicitis, which is unlikely to cause any serious complication or major damage of the organ. It has been seen that doctors prescribe antibiotics quite often for reducing the inflammation resulted by appendicitis. However, still there’s no clear evidence of how many respond to these medications.
It is also not clear whether appendicitis treated with antibiotics can recur or is cured completely. A study was conducted in Sweden for finding answers to these questions. The study was conducted on 252 men between the ages of 15 and 50 years (none of them had major complications or serious perforation in their appendix); they were treated either by antibiotics or by surgery alone. The patients who were treated with antibiotics received the medicines in intravenous forms for the first 2 days and then administered the medicines orally for 10 more days. The patients who did not respond to the medicines underwent surgery immediately. 14 of these patients i.e. 12 percent of 252 patients were not benefited by the antibiotics and had to undergo surgery immediately. This shows that majority (88 percent) of the patients treated with antibiotics recovered from the disease without surgery. This study proves that these medications are extremely effective in treating appendicitis caused by mild to moderate damage of appendix.
In the next 5 years, it was found that 24 percent of the patients who recovered from the disease after taking antibiotics developed another appendicitis episode. Majority of the 24 percent people experienced the recurrence within the first year after the treatment. Each one of the patients experiencing recurrence underwent surgery. It’s true that 24 percent is not a high rate, but is definitely not negligible. The findings of this Swedish study are useful in various purposes. These findings suggest when it is required to postpone the surgery, antibiotics can help significantly.
It must be believed that the results of the study is true only in case of the younger patients as the study was conducted only on patients between the ages of 15 and 50 years. Older patients may not react similarly to the antibiotics. The study was done only on men; however this doesn’t make the result insignificant for the women of the same age group.
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