When shall we operate for appendicitis? / by Willy Meyer.

  • Meyer, Willy, 1858-1932.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: When shall we operate for appendicitis? / by Willy Meyer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    only rarely. Last winter I had to operate for per- forative appendicitis with general diffuse suppurative peritonitis upon a patient who had had the first at- tack twenty-five years ago. The appendix was of the size of a thumb and more than six inches long. There was free pus in the peritoneal cavity. An intra-appen- dicular abscess in the tip of the organ, held in by a tight old stricture, had perforated at last. She died thirty hours after the operation. Had this lady en- joyed perfect health during this quarter of a century? By no means. She had been ailing intermittently, had for years been treated for dyspepsia, had within the last three years led a miserable life on account of repeated attacks of abdominal pains. Her doctor’s advice to have an operation performed was, neverthe- less, always rejected by her. Now is it not worse at the end to have, for instance, a mother of twenty- seven years of age, who had her first attack of appen- dicitis, say, as a girl of seventeen, torn away from husband and children in her second attack than to have given the patient and relatives the worry and probable trouble of an operation soon after the first inflammation? Should not the parents rather stand the worry, to have, say, their little girl of five years operated upon than perhaps later have to take leave from her forever ? There is only one single point seemingly weak in the chain of proofs in favor of the stand I and I trust many colleagues have taken, or at least soon will take, with reference to the question, “ When shall we operate for appendicitis?” That is, we cannot guarantee that the patient will recover from the ope- ration. The statistics of Bull, it is true, show us that the operation in the hands of experienced surgeons is almost void of danger. Yet there is almost two per cent, of deaths. My own patients, twenty in number, have all recovered. But can we guarantee recovery in any other intra- abdominal operation? Does not the general practi-