European Paediatric Surgeons' Association Survey on the Management of Pediatric Appendicitis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
AIM: To define patterns in the management of pediatric appendicitis. METHODS: A total of 169 delegates from 42 (24 European) countries completed a validated survey administered at the EUPSA 2017 annual congress. RESULTS: In the work-up of children with suspected acute appendicitis, most surgeons rely on full blood count (92%), C-reactive protein (82%), and abdominal ultrasonography (76%), but rarely on computed tomography scans or magnetic resonance imaging. In suspected simple appendicitis, most surgeons (76%) do not perform appendectomy at night in clinically stable patients and start antibiotic preoperatively (64%), but only 15% offer antibiotic therapy alone (no appendectomy). In suspected perforated appendicitis, 96% start antibiotic preoperatively, and 92% perform an appendectomy. Presence of phlegmon/abscess is the main contraindication to immediate surgery. In case of appendix mass, most responders (75%) favor a conservative approach and perform interval appendectomy always (56%) or in selected cases (38%) between 2 and 6 months from the first episode (81%). Children with large intraperitoneal abscesses are managed by percutaneous drainage (59% responders) and by surgery (37% responders). Laparoscopy is the preferred surgical approach for both simple (89%) and perforated appendicitis (81%). Most surgeons send the appendix for histology (96%) and pus for microbiology, if present (78%). At the end of the operation, 58% irrigate the abdominal cavity only if contaminated using saline solution (93%). In selected cases, 52% leave a drain in situ. CONCLUSION: Some aspects of appendicitis management lack consensus, particularly appendix mass and intraperitoneal abscess. Evidence-based guidelines should be developed, which may help standardize care and improve clinical outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".