Acute Appendicitis

Acute appendicitis is the most common surgical emergency in children. Despite the widespread adoption of laparoscopic appendectomy, postoperative care still varies widely between institutions, with prolonged fasting, opioid-based analgesia, delayed feeding, and routine drain placement being common. Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) is an evidence-based, multidisciplinary care pathway that has been shown in adults - and increasingly in children - to reduce length of stay, opioid consumption, and postoperative complications. This single-center, prospective, single-arm cohort feasibility study (IDEAL Stage 2a) tests whether a comprehensive 20-item pediatric ERAS protocol, adapted for minimally invasive appendectomy in children aged 5-18 with non-complicated acute appendicitis (ASA I-II), can be implemented with high fidelity and acceptable safety in a tertiary academic pediatric surgery department. We aim to enroll 100 patients to obtain \~80 evaluable cases. The primary endpoint is the global ERAS compliance rate (target ≥80%, with the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval staying above 70%). Co-primary safety endpoints include Clavien-Dindo ≥III complications and 30-day unplanned readmission rates, both targeted at \<5%. Secondary endpoints include time to medical readiness for discharge, actual length of stay, opioid sparing, and parent-reported outcomes. The study includes a structured run-in phase (first 5 patients) with explicit decision logic to either continue with the protocol unchanged or revise it before full enrollment. Audit-and-feedback cycles every 20 patients monitor compliance drift. The findings will inform a definitive institutional clinical guideline and provide hypothesis-generating data for future multi-center trials.

The purpose of this retrospective study is to compare perioperative data for subjects who have undergone an emergent or urgent robotic-assisted or laparoscopic appendectomy for acute appendicitis.

Acute appendicitis is one of the most common surgical emergencies, but diagnostic uncertainty may still lead to unnecessary appendectomy in some patients. This prospective observational study aims to evaluate the diagnostic performance of computed tomography (CT) reporting and the Appendicitis Inflammatory Response (AIR) score in adult patients undergoing appendectomy for suspected acute appendicitis. The primary objective is to determine the negative appendectomy rate based on final histopathology. Secondary objectives are to assess the agreement between AIR score, CT findings, intraoperative severity grading, and pathology results, and to explore diagnostic performance across patient subgroups. No study-specific intervention beyond routine clinical care will be performed.

Acute appendicitis is the most common abdominal surgical emergency in children and a frequent cause of pediatric emergency department visits. Diagnosis may be challenging due to variable clinical presentations and overlapping symptoms with other causes of abdominal pain. The increasing use of telemedicine further limits access to direct physical examination. This study aims to evaluate and validate a predictive clinical score designed for teleconsultation to estimate the probability of acute appendicitis in children. The score is based on symptom history and simple clinical signs assessed remotely with the assistance of a parenton a 10 item checklist. During an emergency visit for acute abdominal pain, voluntary children aged 3 to 16 years and their parents will be guided by a medical student through the checklist in conditions simulating a teleconsultation. The score will be recorded for research purposes only and will not influence clinical management. All participants will subsequently undergo standard medical evaluation and management by an emergency physician, who will independently assess the probability of acute appendicitis based on routine clinical practice. The diagnostic performance of the simulated teleconsultation will then be evaluated using advanced statistical and artificial intelligence-based methods and compared with standard in-person pediatric emergency consultation.

Diagnosing acute appendicitis in children remains a clinical challenge, with delayed or incorrect diagnosis potentially leading to serious complications or unnecessary surgery. Prostaglandin E urinary metabolites (PGE-M) have been found elevated in various inflammatory conditions, but their diagnostic value in pediatric appendicitis is not well established. This study aims to assess the potential of PGE-M as a biomarker for acute appendicitis in children. The study will be conducted over 12 months and will include 100 children aged 5 to 17 years presenting with acute abdominal pain. In addition to routine laboratory tests, urinary PGE-M levels will be analyzed. The study involves minimal risk to participants

Background: China's healthcare system for children faces significant challenges, particularly due to the limited pediatric service capacity of primary healthcare institutions. A shortage of effective and accessible training tools for primary care doctors further hinders progress in addressing this gap. Technological advancements, especially in artificial intelligence, offer a potential solution to improve pediatric care. Artificial intelligence-driven virtual standardized patients (VSPs), leveraging internet and virtual simulation technologies, simulate clinical cases with specific disease characteristics, providing an innovative, efficient, and flexible training method. VSPs are increasingly utilized in medical education, clinical reasoning, and licensure exams. This study focuses on using VSPs to improve the management of common pediatric conditions, which are major health concerns for children and impose significant psychological and financial burdens on families. Methods: This study will involve a three-arm randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a virtual pediatric standardized patient platform in enhancing primary care doctors' management of common pediatric diseases. At least 459 participants, including general practitioners, internal medicine practitioners, surgeons, and pediatricians from more than 10 provinces across China, will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: the virtual patient platform group, the case teaching manual group, or the case teaching video group. Five virtual patient cases covering pneumococcal pneumonia, rotavirus enteritis with hypovolemic shock, hand-foot-and-mouth disease, acute appendicitis, and respiratory failure will be developed, along with corresponding case teaching materials. After a two-week learning period, participants' disease management abilities will be assessed using clinical vignettes. The primary outcome is adherence to best clinical practice guidelines, categorized into full adherence, partial adherence, and nonadherence. Discussion: This study aims to leverage artificial intelligence for capacity enhancement, targeting the shortcomings of primary care pediatrics and using VSP to help enhance primary care pediatrics capacity. It is a randomized controlled trial involving over 300 primary healthcare institutions across more than 10 provinces in China, ensuring broad and representative participation from both developed and underdeveloped regions.

Magnesium sulfate is one of the most commonly used co-analgetics. Its antinociceptive effect is related to antagonizing NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptors of the nervous system, has an anti-inflammatory effect by reducing the concentration of IL-6 (interleukin 6) and tumor necrosis factor alpha. In adult patients, the need for morphine in the perioperative period is reduced when magnesium infusion is used. In current guidelines for treatment of acute pain in children, magnesium sulfate may be considered as a co-analgetic. However, the strength of such a recommendation is low due to the lack of reliable scientific research confirming the effectiveness of magnesium infusion in the pediatric population. The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of intravenous magnesium sulfate infusion on the opioid consumption, the circulatory, metabolic and hormonal response to intubation and surgical trauma during anesthesia for laparoscopic appendectomy in children.

The WIRES-T project (Web-based International Registry of Emergency General Surgery and Trauma) has been set up to allow to all the EGS (Emergency General Surgery) and Trauma surgeons to register their activity and to obtain a worldwide register of traumatic and non traumatic surgical emergencies. This will give the opportunity to evaluate results on a macro-data basis and to give index allowing stratifying, evaluating and improving the outcomes.