This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Ferris M. Hall, MD
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Boston, Mass

JAMA. 1997;277(8):626.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—It is unfortunate that an article entitled "does this patient have appendicitis?" dismisses computed tomography (CT) with a single sentence stating that "the accuracy of computed tomography in diagnosing appendicitis has been inconsistent."1

Wagner et al¹ base this statement on references from an older literature, prior to the general availability of such improvements as spiral CT and thin section scanning. More recent studies demonstrate a 96% to 100% sensitivity and an 89% to 95% specificity of CT in the diagnosis of appendicitis.^2-4 Rao et al⁴ identified the normal or abnormal appendix in all of their 100 cases. More importantly, CT can frequently diagnose or exclude other conditions that simulate appendicitis.^2,3

The article by Wagner et al¹ specifically emphasizes the clinical examination. As a radiologist who has spent much of his career writing about the overutilization of imaging examinations, I heartily concur with this approach. However, . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?