Surgery Risk

   Your lifetime risk of undergoing and appendectomy is 25 percent if you are a woman and 12.5 percent if you are a man. (D. Flum and T. Koepsell, The clinical and economic correlates of misdiagnosed appendicitis: nationwide analysis. Arch Surg 137 (2002), pp. 799–804.)

   Acute appendicitis is actually more common in men than women by a small margin, but it’s more difficult to diagnose in women, so more women undergo surgery than men. Women are also nearly twice as likely as men to have a normal appendix removed at surgery. (Tommy Shelton MD, Rodrick McKinlay MD, and Richard W. Schwartz MD:

   Acute appendicitis: current diagnosis and treatment. Volume 60, Issue 5 , September-October 2003, Pages 502-505.)

  Historically, in some hospitals it’s been considered ok to remove a normal appendix as often as 50 percent of the time, so you can see that diagnosing appendicitis is not easy! You might easily undergo and operation that you never needed. On the other hand, waiting too long to operate for appendicitis can be disastrous.

Written for the Appendicitis Foundation (AppendicitisFoundation.org) by Bradley R. Hennenfent, MD, on July 24, 2004.