clinical features of acute appendicitis in infants

Last reviewed 01/2018

Infants with acute appendicitis have a particularly high mortality rate from acute appendicitis that is partly attributable to their non-specific presentation and hence an increased amount of time for perforation to occur:

• abdominal pain not always present
• irritability
• marked pyrexia
• tachycardia
• vomiting
• local abdominal tenderness
• diarrhoea

Such symptoms and signs may be attributed to concomitant and possibly pathogenetic gastroenteritis, respiratory infections of exanthemata.