After century of removing appendixes, docs find antibiotics can be enough

Enlarge / All this time! (credit: Getty | Anna Bizon)

After more than a century of slicing tiny, inflamed organs from people's guts, doctors have found that surgery may not be necessary after all-a simple course of antibiotics can be just as effective at treating appendicitis as going under the knife.

The revelation comes from a large, randomized trial out of Finland, published Tuesday, September 25, in JAMA.

Despite upending a long-held standard of care, the study's finding is not entirely surprising; it follows several other randomized trials over the years that had carved out evidence that antibiotics alone can treat an acute appendicitis. Those studies, however, left some dangling questions, including if the antibiotics just improved the situation temporarily and if initial drug treatments left patients worse off later if they did need surgery.

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