Survey of efficacy of pediatric appendicitis score in Iranian patients less than 18 years old referred to the emergency department

INTRODUCTION: Abdominal pain, in particular appendicitis, is a common cause of emergency department visits in children. Therefore, early diagnosis is very important. There are different scoring systems for the diagnosis of appendicitis. This study is the first study to evaluate the performance and accuracy of pediatric appendicitis score (PAS) in Iranian children with abdominal pain in emergency departments. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study of children under 18 years with suspected appendicitis who were referred to the emergency medicine department of hospitals affiliated to SBMU during 2015. Acute appendicitis was determined according to pathological findings, and final PAS scores were calculated for all children. With statistical analysis, comparison between two groups was calculated and the diagnostic accuracy of PAS score was estimated. RESULTS: 88 children with mean age of 10.5 ± 3 were studied. According to clinical examination 58 of the children were suspected to have acute appendicitis and 30 others were healthy. In current study, the diagnostic accuracy and precision of PAS at cutoff of 5.5 in patients younger than 18 years admitted to the emergency department with suspected acute appendicitis was 91% and 92%, respectively. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value were 93.88%, 86.21% and 92%, 89.29%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The results of current study showed that PAS has high diagnostic predictive value for the diagnosis of acute appendicitis in children under 18 years and due to the advantages listed for this score, its use is recommended for children in emergencies.