News to Know...

In case you are experiencing severe abdominal pain...

For more than 100 years, the standard treatment for appendicitis has been surgery. Now a large Finnish study provides the best evidence to date that most patients can be treated with antibiotics alone.

The published Tuesday in JAMA, involved 530 patients aged 18 to 60 who agreed to have their treatment — antibiotics or surgery — decided at random.

Three out of four who took antibiotics recovered easily, the researchers found. And none who had surgery after taking antibiotics were worse off for having waited.

“The time has come to consider abandoning routine appendectomy for patients with uncomplicated appendicitis, ” Dr. Edward H. Livingston, a surgeon and editor at the journal, who was not involved with the study, wrote in an editorial accompanying the report.