Why is appendicitis a medical emergency?
In: Biology
To add a little to the other answers, the appendix can rupture. This can happen quite quickly, within a few days. Anything spilling out infected stuff inside your body is a *really bad thing*.
Because it can explode and kill you pretty fast.
Source: My doctor the day after my surgery saying *It was really big 8.8cm,a little more and would explode and could kill you. Thank God we made you stay another day*
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Cause if it bursts You get stool in Your peritoneum which quickly spreads through the stomach and kills You.
This is well timed, as my patient with abdominal pain developed Blumberg’s symptom just now, coupled with his leukocytes skyrocketing.
The appendix is attached to your colon. The colon is full of some pretty yucky stuff, and *any* amount of colon contents getting out into your abdominal cavity is bad.
With acute appendicitis, you have a grossly swollen appendix and a large amount of bacteria, pus, dead & dying cells, and general grossness. At this point you are already fairly sick.
If it bursts, you get a very sudden release of all that infectious grossness being released into your abdominal cavity- not a little bit, but a whole lot, very quickly. You will get sepsis, followed by a rapid descent into peritonitis and shock.
Not every case of appendicitis progresses to a life threatening emergency, these days it’s most often caught early and a prompt course of antibiotics can help stop it before it gets bad enough to require surgery.
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