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REVIEW PROCESS
Aim:
how accurate are symptoms, signs, and laboratory tests for diagnosing appendicitis in children with abdominal pain?
Search methods:
Medline (to March 2007), Cochrane Library, textbooks, and reference lists.
Study selection and assessment:
fully published studies in English that evaluated the accuracy of medical history, physical examination, or basic laboratory tests for diagnosing appendicitis in children, using independent, blinded comparison with a gold standard—surgical pathological findings, clinical observation, or follow-up (level of evidence 1–3). 25 studies were included: 1 level 1 study (n = 246) of unselected children presenting to the emergency department with undifferentiated abdominal pain (appendicitis prevalence 10%) and 24 level 3 studies (n = 5590) of selected patients with …
Footnotes
Funding: no external funding.
Footnotes
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