[Laparoscopic or classical appendectomy? A prospective randomized study]

Though laparoscopic appendectomy started endoscopic surgery in general surgery, it has yet not reached the acceptance as is the case with cholecystectomy. The application of this technique in possibly bland appendices and reports that the technique was accompanied by severe complications, increases the scepticism about it. This made us decide to start a randomized controlled trial: laparoscopic vs. conventional appendectomy. More than 1000 endoscopic interventions mainly performed at the gallbladder and the stomach and 165 prospectively documented and partly treated patients with acute appendicitis were the basis to start this trial. "Acute Appendicitis" was diagnosed on the basis of clinical symptoms by means of the computer-aided questionnaire of the EC-study "Acute Abdominal Pain", a self-developed validated diagnostic score, the macroscopic findings and the careful assessment of the histology of the resected appendix. Beside the technical feasibility, principle end-points were mainly intensity and course of postoperative pain measured by means of the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) in lying, standing and moving position and the postoperative consumption of analgesics. We assessed a difference of 15 points on the VAS as clinically relevant. Of 57 patients with acute appendicitis we performed open appendectomy in 23 and laparoscopy in 34 patients according to randomization. In 9 patients of the laparoscopy group it was necessary to change over to open appendectomy for different reasons resulting in a direct comparison of 25 laparoscopies versus 23 open appendectomies. There were no differences between sociodemographic and preclinical data in both groups.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)