The treatment of appendicitis is appendectomy. The opportunity to study patients, not subjected to appendectomy after appendicitis, is therefore unusual and ordinarily relegated to those patients with an appendiceal abscess in which the appendix could not be removed safely and to those with inadvertent, incomplete appendectomy.
In order to reevaluate the necessity for elective interval appendectomy after appendicitis not treated with appendectomy, we have reviewed the charts of 586 patients treated for acute appendicitis at St. Vincent's Hospital in the past five years. In 49 patients there was localized abscess: the incidence was therefore 8.4% in our series. In 15 of these patients (30%) the appendix could not be excised; only an incision and drainage being performed. One patient was treated expectantly. Ten of the 16 patients returned for their scheduled interval appendectomy; five of the appendices of these patients showed acute or subacute inflammation, four were normal or chronically