Conventional versus small incision appendectomy: a retrospective randomized controlled trial study

Abstract

Background: Open appendectomy is practiced for more than a century and in the recent times small incision appendectomy is also practiced frequently. The efficacy of conventional appendectomy and small incision appendectomy in terms of pain, operating time and duration of hospital stay and have produced conflicting results. Hence this study was conducted to assess the same.  Methods: A hospital based randomized controlled trial study was conducted among the patients with appendicitis undergoing surgical intervention for the same in department of general surgery in Sri Muthukumaran Medical College Hospital and Research Institute, Chennai, during the study period from January 2017 to December 2019. A total of eighty cases with acute appendicitis were included in the study. Group A (n=40) includes conventional open appendectomy cases and group B (n=40) includes small incision open appendectomy cases. Data entry was done using Microsoft excel and data was analyzed using SPSS version 17. Results: Blood loss, post-operative pain scores on day 1 and day 2, duration of hospital stay were found to be reduced in Small incision open appendectomy group compared to conventional open appendectomy group. Duration taken to resuming the normal activities and the complications were found to be similar in both conventional and small incision appendectomy group and small incision open appendectomy group.  Conclusions: Small incision open appendectomy is superior to conventional open appendectomy in terms of length of hospital stay, return to normal activity, blood loss and postoperative pain scores, which are considered the major advantages of minimally invasive surgery.