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After Century of Removing Appendixes, Docs Find Antibiotics Can Be Enough (arstechnica.com)
After more than a century of slicing tiny, inflamed organs from people's guts, doctors have found that surgery may not be necessary after all -- a simple course of antibiotics can be just as effective at treating appendicitis as going under the knife. From a report: The revelation comes from a large, randomized trial out of Finland, published Tuesday, September 25, in JAMA. Despite upending a long-held standard of care, the study's finding is not entirely surprising; it follows several other randomized trials over the years that had carved out evidence that antibiotics alone can treat an acute appendicitis. Those studies, however, left some dangling questions, including if the antibiotics just improved the situation temporarily and if initial drug treatments left patients worse off later if they did need surgery. The new JAMA study, with its full, five-year follow-up, effectively cauterised those remaining issues. Nearly two-thirds of the patients randomly assigned in the study to get antibiotics for an uncomplicated appendicitis didn't end up needing surgery in the follow-up time, the Finnish authors, based at the University of Turku, report. And those drug-treated patients that did end up getting an appendectomy later were not worse off for the delay in surgery. "This long-term follow-up supports the feasibility of antibiotic treatment alone as an alternative to surgery for uncomplicated acute appendicitis," the authors conclude. The finding suggests that many appendicitis patients could be spared the risks of surgical procedures, such as infections.
This will never fly in the USA; a surgical procedure will generate much more profit than a simple prescription. Our medical system is based on a for-profit model.
You don't need to nuke it; just assist enough that the body can get a handle on the infection.
Antibiotics no longer work.
The badly named and poorly edited book, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer lists numerous ways in which medical procedures in the United States are poor.
On page 8, that book recommends another book, Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health. I haven't read that one yet.
When I first read a similar line in Houellebecq's writing, I was skeptical. Since that time, I have seen that in every profession, humans have invented ways of following procedure instead of doing what is necessary. This rewards the individual humans involved with more money but makes them weak because they spend their time on wastage. This bloat affects all human societies once they reach a certain level of internal division.
Alternative Right.
Remember averages include a wide range of cases. At one extreme you have someone who is young and fit, has an occupation that doesn't involve much physical stress and where they succeed in doing the procedure keyhole. At the other extreme you have someone who is old, works a manual job and has some complications during surgery that require them to fully open the abdomen.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I don't care if they remove appendixes, but I really wish they'd get rid of endnotes. They're just a hassle.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Wait....what's this?
Oh...oh dear. Was that a pun?
Was that ANOTHER surgery pun?
Finding God in a Dog
Can confirm. Good news is that it gets easier with each surgery. I'm up to three (appendicitis and some hernias). If I get 2 more, I'll have my punch card filled out for a free one.
My cousin had appendicitis less than a year ago, in NYC, and they gave him the choice of surgery or antibiotics; he chose the antibiotics and all went fine. (Interestingly he says they offered him to be in a study where they'd randomly assign him to one or the other; he declined in favor of avoiding surgery.)