Helical CT With Oral Contrast Material for Imaging of Suspected Appendicitis and the Role of Mechanical Bowel Preparation for Appendectomy

We evaluated the accuracy and the efficiency of a focused computed tomography technique with contrast material administered by mouth for the diagnosis of appendicitis. Sixty three patients prospectively underwent appendiceal eT scans after meglumine diatrizoate solution as contrast material and poly ethylene glycol as mechanical bowel preparation were administered by mouth for suspected appendicitis. This focused appendiceal eT technique proved to have a sensitivity of 92.9%, specificity of 100%, and accuracy of 98.1 %, respectively.
The risk and difficulty of this method have been minimized, while diagnostic accuracy for appendicitis has been maintained. In addition, the advantage of this technique enables to perform the mechanical bowel preparation which reduce the infectious morbidity after appendectomy at the same time.