Role of platelet indices as a biomarker for the diagnosis of acute appendicitis and as a predictor of complicated appendicitis: A meta-analysis

INTRODUCTION: Acute appendicitis is one of the most common surgical emergencies worldwide. Clinical scoring system systems have been developed to diagnose acute appendicitis, but insufficient to predict the complication. The amount of serum biomarkers elevates in response to acute inflammation, which could be beneficial for diagnostic tools. Accordingly, a meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of platelet indices, including mean platelet volume (MVP) and platelet distribution width (PDW) as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of a diagnosis of acute appendicitis. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The dataset was defined by searching for articles published until December 2020 from PubMed, EMBASE, Google Scholar and the Cochrane database. The meta-analysis was performed using Review Manager Software version 5.4.1. RESULTS: The final analysis was made from 9 studies, including 3124 patients. The results demonstrated that lower MPV values was significantly associated with acute appendicitis (odds ratio (OR) = 0.81, 95% confidence interval (CI) = −1.51 to −0.11, P = 0.02), but not associated with complicated appendicitis by comparing it with the control (OR = −0.13,95% CI = −0.33 to −0.07, P = 0.19) and non-complicated appendicitis groups (OR = −0.13,95% CI = −0.30 to −0.04, P = 0.14). The present study failed to demonstrate the diagnostic value of PDW for the prediction of appendicitis and its complication. CONCLUSION: The results of the meta-analysis strongly indicate that a lower MVP values could function as a marker for predicting the acute appendicitis.