The Early Days of Appendicectomy

Abstract

I suppose the commonest abdominal emergency operation performed throughout most of the world today is an appendicectomy - usually through an abdominal incision of various shapes and now, increasingly, by laparoscopic surgery. The results are excellent, with a low morbidity and tiny mortality. Indeed, in my own experience of 40 years of surgery, (1948 to 1989), there was not a single death in the various units that I worked on, although we had some fairly hairy near-misses among patients with advanced peritonitis at the time of their surgery.