CLINICOPATHOLOGICAL REVIEW OF APPENDICECTOMY SPECIMEN IN A TROPICAL MISSION HOSPITAL

BACKGROUND: Acute appendicitis remains a common surgical condition and the importance of specific elements in the clinical diagnosis remain controversial. It is a disease of the young presenting in children and early adolescents although no age group is exempt. This clinicopathological study aims to determine the various lesions of the surgically removed appendix in a resource constrained mission hospital setting, northwestern Cameroon. METHOD: This retrospective cross-sectional descriptive study was undertaken to review the histo-pathology reports of all appendectomy specimens submitted to the Pathology department, Central Laboratory of a Mission Hospital; Northwestern region of Cameroon from January 2011 to January 2016. Patient’s socio-demographical data, clinical presentations were extracted from the request form. The data were analyzed using the SPSS version 22 and presented with descriptive and inferential statistics. RESULTS: A total of 683 appendices were received during the 5-year study period constituting about 12% of total specimens. The age range of patients in this study is 14–78 years with a mean of 20.12 ± 5.12 years. Acute appendicitis was found in 86.9% of our cases while other lesions constitute 13.1% and negative appendectomy occurred in 4.5% of the cases. CONCLUSION: The incidence of acute appendicitis remains low especially in the rural communities of Africa. We therefore conclude that the current study spanned the entire gamut of pathological processes that involve the appendix and provides a fair idea about the clinicopathological correlation in appendectomy specimens. KEYWORDS: Acute abdomen; Appendix; Appendectomy; Histology; Resource-constrained setting