The impact of early sonographic evaluation on hospital admissions of children with suspected acute appendicitis

Early ultrasound (US) evaluation of children with abdominal pain and suspected acute appendicitis (AA) is an important diagnostic tool. Since 2007, US has become part of routine emergency room (ER) work-up performed for suspected pediatric AA in our hospital. We retrospectively compared hospital admissions from 2007 to 2008 with those from 2005 to 2006, when most ultrasounds were done after admission to Pediatric Surgery for observation. During the study (2005–2008), 6,511 children came to the ER with acute abdominal pain. Although pediatric ER sonography increased from 28.1% (865/3,079) in 2005–2006 to 51.7% (1,775/3,432) in 2007–2008 (p