Appendicitis dogma overturned: Surgery usually optional.

Every body knows you get your appendix out when you have appendicitis. Medical schools teach the operation and nobody checked to see what antibiotics could do.   Seems they do a lot.  As reported in the British Medical Journal of April 5th, two thirds of the patients were cured without surgery.  Those operated on if (no improvement was seen in two days) had better recoveries with fewer complications.

Dr. Dalrymple reports on this at Pajamas Media.  He describes his response as a doctor to the news:

There is a certain pleasure in having your prejudices overturned.  I strongly believed that the operation of appendectomy.. was essential for the condition of appendicitis. If the patient did not have the operation, he would suffer dangerous complications such as perforation and then peritonitis. True, I had not given a lot of thought to the question since I was a very young doctor, but it was what I had been taught in good faith by eminent men and so I continued to believe it.   .....   This finding is all the more significant because a high proportion of appendectomies prove to have been performed on appendices that were not inflamed and whose removal was not necessary.

The old song: Cut it out, Cut it out, Remove it!