Atypical manifestation of acute appendicitis (analysis of diagnostic errors).

This monograph was written in 1984 in the former Soviet Union by a professor of surgery with more than 45 years of experience and doctor who was a founding member and for many years the Chair of the Department Of Emergency Abdominal Surgery of the State Medical Institute (Dushanbe). He is the author of a greatly revered book Lecture Notes on Abdominal Surgery as well as more than 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals. The title presented here contains a wealth of clinical observations and was the first to present a concise and precise classification of atypical appendicitis, i.e. appendicitis that presents with symptoms mimicking gastroenterological, gynecological and urological emergencies, or even lung diseasses. Ten thousand cases of appendicitis were examined for the purpose of this research. Out of these, 300 cases had a strongly atypical presentation, but with an analytical approach a correct diagnosis was available. The focus on the Importance of medical observation and clinical thinking presented in this monograph will be of great value to surgeons of differing levels of experience as well as to medical school students. In particular, it may be of great assistance to doctors in the large areas of the world where access to advanced electronic diagnostic equipment is a desirable but still distant future. Its detailed and substantial account of differential diagnosis could even be of value as a training source for medical artificial intelligence. Last but not least, it will be of importance to medical historians: the ten thousand cases which underlie it were collected over a research period of twenty years in the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s.