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This is not a post about the utility (or not) of doing a CT scan to diagnose acute appendicitis.

I came across this at Shadowfax’s blog. It’s a great story, which just happens to be about appendicitis & CT scan.

I recently cared for a young boy with abdominal pain. He was about six years old, and had pain in his lower abdomen for about 12 hours prior to coming to the ER. His parents, Ukranian immigrants, were really nice people. Their English could have been a little better, but we could understand one another perfectly with a little effort and we got along fine. They were among the nicest people I have had the pleasure of interacting with in the ER in a long time. They were reserved, polite, and deeply respectful towards me in a manner that struck me as almost old-fashioned, and they were very concerned about their son, their only child, who was in a lot of pain and had never been ill like this before.

I was almost certain that he had appendicitis, and after explaining this to the parents, I called the surgeon to see if we could just take him to the OR for a laparotomy. You may recall I’ve run into trouble with this sort of thing before, and the surgeon, the same surgeon as before, wouldn’t bite this time. In fairness, the story wasn’t quite perfect — the pain didn’t localize quite right, the white count wasn’t really high enough, etc — so she asked me to image the child to verify the diagnosis, which is reasonable.

Read the rest of the story at Movin’ Meat: Triggers.