WHEN SHOULD ONE OPERATE FOR "CHRONIC APPENDICITIS"?

Abstract

The busy consultant is constantly being called on to help decide whether or not in a given case a certain operation should be performed. Every one knows that this operation works miracles of healing in some cases, but would it do so in the particular one? Often the consultant can only guess and sometimes, of course, being human and fallible, he must guess wrong. From time to time he will hear that some woman who disregarded his advice and went ahead with an operation for which he could see no indications promptly got well, and then he will wonder whether the patient was really cured and if so whether the surgeon who operated was an unusually wise and discerning man or was just lucky. Did he take a long history and from this decide that here was one frail psychopathic woman who could be helped by a laparotomy, or did