Acute Appendicitis Diagnosis and Treatment Strategy for Women in Late Pregnancy

Introduction. Acute appendicitis (OA) developing in patients during pregnancy presents a complex problem in emergency medicine. Clinical practice proves that acute appendicitis may complicate pregnancy at any gestation. Appendicitis developing in late pregnancy poses serious difficulties in terms of diagnostics and the selection of optimal obstetric and surgical management strategy due to limited options for the use of state of the art endoscopic imaging examination methods.

Materials and methods. The authors have analysed the treatment and diagnosis results of 159 pregnant women admitted to surgical and maternity departments of the City Teaching Hospital №8 in 2006–2015. Of these, 73 (45.9%) women were treated surgically for acute appendicitis; 13 (17.8%) women were in the first, 34 (46.6%) — second and 26 (35.6 %) — third trimester of pregnancy. In 86 (54.1%) women the diagnosis of acute appendicitis was ruled out at the diagnostic stage. Of these, 26 (31.4%) women were in the third trimester of pregnancy. The control group included women with acute appendicitis in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy.

Results and discussion. For all the pregnant women admitted in the third trimester, the diagnosis of acute appendicitis was extremely difficult as evidenced by the length of the pre-op observation period. For instance, for 14 (53.8%) women the length of pre-op observation amounted to over 12 hours, for six (23.1%) women — up to 12 hours, for four (15.4%) women — up to six hours. The average pre-op observation time amounted to 12.7±3.1 hours. In the control group in women in the second trimester this indicator was 10.9±2.3 hours and statistically insignificant (p>0.05). The pre-op observation time for women in the first trimester of pregnancy amounted to 5.4±1.2 hours (p<0.05).

Conclusion. In cases of uncomplicated acute appendicitis in pregnant women up to 34 weeks gestation it is advisable to perform the surgery via the Volkovich-Dyakonov extended access and bring the pregnancy to term. In patients with acute appendicitis with complications and/or when the gestation is 35 weeks and over it is justifiable to perform both the caesarean and appendectomy through the midline laparotomy access.

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