When was first appendectomy

By the end of the 20th century, laparoscopic surgery replaced open surgery in most cases, and laparoscopic appendectomy is now considered one of the safest, lowest-complication surgical procedures performed today. Despite this excellent track record, many questions about the appendix still persist. The causes of acute appendicitis have yet to be identified, and we do not yet understand why the appendix will rupture in some patients and recover in others.

Only in did researchers finally offer a compelling case for the function of the appendix: the tiny organ appears to play a role in both the digestive and immune systems by acting as a storehouse for valuable bacteria, which are enlisted when the gastrointestinal tract loses its beneficial gut flora. More recently, researchers are revisiting the question of whether antibiotics are just as effective as surgery for treatment for acute appendicitis.

In the s and s, doctors in England began treating patients with antibiotics — with excellent results. During the Cold War, men on submarines received antibiotics instead of an appendectomy, as the submarines could not surface for six months or more, and patients reportedly did well with this approach.

In light of this evidence, a new study in California will attempt to verify whether antibiotics may be as good as surgery and offer a less invasive approach to the treatment of appendicitis. Mestivier in Andrew Hospital in Bordeaux for a mass localized on the right side of the umbilical area. The mass was fluctuant and was opened. A pint of pus came out. The patient died shortly after and during the autopsy it was found that the abscess had started from a small pin covered with salts perforating the appendix.

Frank, who writes of this picture as peritonitis muscularis in The case presented by John Parkinson was also the first case of appendicitis published in English. In , Wegeler described 7 in detail the case of an year-old patient admitted for mild abdominal spasms for 3 days, followed by an acute and localized pain in the right lower quadrant, increasing at minimal palpation. The abdomen was tender, patient had constipation that was preceded by mild diarrhea, nausea and vomiting.

The next day the extremities became cold and the patient died. On autopsy, there was a generalized peritonitis and the cecum was gangrenous. Only a few years later, in , the French Francois Melier — was the first to describe what today is a chronic appendicitis and suggested a surgical approach. Many of anatomists added more or less insignificant ideas concerning the structure of the appendix and entered upon useless controversy concerning the name, function, position of the appendix vermiformis.

The first successful appendectomy was performed in by Claudius Amyand. Geillaume Dupuytren considered that acute inflammation of the right side of the abdomen arose from disease of the caecum and not the appendix. As surgeons were wary of opening the abdomen for examination, early stages of appendicitis remained unknown.

John Parkinson was able to give a good description of fatal appendicitis in Surgeons began draining localised abscesses which had already formed.