Background: The diagnosis of acute appendicitis is purely based on history, clinical examination and some laboratory investigations (e.g. WBC count). Certain diagnosis can only be obtained at surgery and after pathological examination of surgical specimen. The Atema scoring system can distinguish complicated from non-complicated appendicitis preoperatively.
Objective: To evaluate the validity and diagnostic accuracy of the Atema scoring system in differentiating complicated from non- complicated appendicitis before surgery.
Patients and Methods: A prospective study was carried out on 60 patients complaining of acute abdominal pain, diagnosed as acute appendicitis using the Alvarado score and undergoing open appendectomy operation in the Emergency Department, Faculty of Medicine, Al-Azhar University from December 2019 to July 2020. Routine clinical and laboratory work up were done, the Atema Score was calculated to every patient in the study preoperatively. The decision to operate was made by a senior surgeon (consultant). The intraoperative finding whether the acute appendicitis was complicated or not was recorded. Post operatively, the histo-pathological examination results were recorded for each patient. The ROC curve was done, the cut-off point of the Atema scoring system was detected based on the ROC curve. The area under the ROC curve and the p-value were calculated. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of the Atema scoring system above the level of the cut-off point were calculated.
Results: In total of 60 patients, 37 patients (61.7%) had complicated appendicitis and 23 patients (38.3%) had non-complicated appendicitis. The sensitivity of the Atema score has a diagnostic accuracy of 0.944 (Area under the curve) with sensitivity 86.96% and specificity 89.19% with positive predictive value 83.3% and negative predictive value 91.7%.
Conclusion: The Atema score can significantly differentiate between complicated and non-complicated acute appendicitis. A higher score denotes increased probability of the presence of complications as perforation and gangrene.