Why is appendicitis a medical emergency?
In: Biology
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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