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A Diagnostic Score (DS) in the Difficult Diagnosis of Non-specific Abdominal Pain (NSAP)
Maaret Eskelinen1, Jannica Meklin1, Tuomas Selander2
1Department of Surgery Kuopio University Hospital and School of Medicine, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland.
Background/Aim:
The diagnostic scores (DSs) for patients with non-specific abdominal pain (NSAP) have been rarely evaluated.
Patients And Methods:
In the NSAP study group there were 614 patients (268 females and 346 males) versus 719 patients in the non-NSAP group including 368 females and 351 males. The clinical symptoms (n=22), signs and tests (n=14) and laboratory analyses (n=3) were recorded in each patient. Meta-analytical techniques were used to detect the summary sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Sp) estimates for each data set (symptoms, signs and tests as well as DS models).
Results:
In receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, the area under curve (AUC) values for i) symptoms ii) signs and tests and iii) DS were as following: i) AUC=0.542 (95% CI=0.512-0.572); ii) AUC=0.625 (95% CI=0.550-0.700), and iii) AUC=0.874 (95% CI=0.850-0.898). The differences between these AUC values are as following: between i and ii, p=0.097; between i and iii, p<0.0001 and between ii and iii, p<0.0001.
Conclusion:
This is the first study to provide evidence that DS may help in the difficult diagnosis of NSAP.
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