Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study is to review the studies performed by pediatric surgery clinics in Turkey about appendicitis so as to determine general tendencies on this issue and to try to prepare the basis for an index so as to shed light on the planning of future studies.

Materials and Method: The sources were reached by scanning abstract books of the Turkish National Congresses of Pediatric Surgery, all issues of the Journal of the Turkish Association of Pediatric Surgeons, national medical index of Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, and internet archives of medical journal not included in PubMed, and national indices.and references of the available studies. All of the studies about appendicitis whose one of the authors was a pediatric surgeon (even if not the first name) were reviewed from all aspects, references were arranged based on the name of the provinces, and centers where the studies were performed. Textbooks and review articles written by Turkish pediatric surgeons, and publications that could not be reached were not included but added to the end of the references.

Results: 361 studies with abstracts or full texts available were evaluated. 208 of them were congress presentations and 153 (42%) were journal articles. Seventy-six (36.6%) congress presentations were published as articles. A hundred and four clinical researches were prospective studies. A total of 698 authors from 82 centers of 42 provinces contributed to the study. In almost all studies, although data about various aspects of the subject overlapped each other, most frequently elaborated main themes were diagnosis,etiopathogenesis, complications, and laparoscopic appendectomy.

Conclusion: Although almost every aspects of appendicis were investigated, in the centers of pediatric surgery in our country, remarkably, sufficient consensus even in terminology has not been reached.. Assembling an “Appendicitis Working Group” was established within the frame of the Turkish Society of the Pediatric Surgeons, preparing a standardized anamnesis form, developing a national pediatric appendicitis case database and, forming a national publishing index will create a common background for facilitating more reliable, multicentered future studies.