1475 Management of Appendicitis During COVID19 - A Shift to Conservative Management

The COVID19 pandemic posed challenges in dealing with common surgical conditions, by causing a redirect of manpower and resources as well as having correlation of added morbidity if present in patients undergoing surgery Aim To find out the proportion of patients undergoing conservative management and their outcomes compared to operative management Method Retrospective data collection of patients admitted with appendicitis from 25/03/2020 to 15/07/2020. Results A total of 72 encounters had a discharge diagnosis of appendicitis.35 (48.6%) patients were treated with conservative management. while 37 (51.4%) patients had operative management. In the conservative group CT scan was done in 64%, which showed simple appendicitis in 78% and complicated in 17 %, whereas in the operative group CT scan was done in 59.4% , 86 % had simple appendicitis and 9% and complicated appendicitis. Median length of stay in both groups were 2 days. There were no readmissions in the operative group and 84.3% patients had no readmissions in the conservative group in the study in a follow up period up to 6 months. 2 patients initially treated conservative were eventually offered surgery on readmission. Conclusions 1. Conservative management of appendicitis has proved to be a valuable alternative to surgical management during this pandemic 2. Patients should be offered a choice of conservative management for simple appendicitis with prior discussion of benefits of avoiding surgery versus risk to recurrence (up to 39% reported in literature for uncomplicated appendicitis)