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Appendicitis can be cured with antibiotics.
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
Antibiotic therapy may be the best treatment option for acute appendicitis – although not for all patients. Some will still have to undergo surgery. This information was announced by specialists during a large-scale experiment called “Assessing the Outcomes of Using Antibiotics and Removing the Appendix in Appendicitis.” The scientists’ findings were presented this fall in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Every year in the United States alone, surgeons perform more than 250,000 procedures on patients with appendicitis. Appendectomy is one of the top 20 most common surgical procedures. But a new study involving 25 hospitals across the United States has found that a course of antibiotics can help a huge number of patients cure the inflammation without surgery.
During the research, the specialists analyzed the medical records of more than 1,500 patients who sought medical help with a diagnosis of acute appendicitis, starting from the spring of 2016 to the beginning of 2020. The patients participating in the study were on average 38 years old: about 60% of them were men, and the rest were women. In some patients, the diagnosis was supplemented by appendicolith - an inflammatory process resulting from the passage of a stone from the appendix into the abdominal cavity. The researchers prescribed 10-day antibiotic therapy to 50% of the patients, and surgical removal of the appendix to the remaining 50%. In general, the health of the patients was monitored for three months.
As the observation showed, 7 out of ten patients who underwent antibiotic therapy did not require further surgery during all three months. At the same time, patients with appendicolith had a higher risk of complications, and they required surgery more often. Although, it is also necessary to voice such information that stones in the appendix are a fairly rare phenomenon.
According to practicing specialists, both antibiotic therapy and appendectomy are methods that have both pros and cons. In particular, appendicitis removal requires both special preparation and a certain recovery period, which includes the same antibiotic therapy. However, non-surgical treatment also has its risks. For example, insufficiently long-term use of drugs or an incorrectly chosen dosage can affect the further development of the inflammatory process, which after some time will still require surgical intervention. Moreover, the ability to treat appendicitis with antibiotics can lead to patients trying to self-medicate, which is extremely unacceptable.
Just a few years ago, scientists representing the Royal Medical Centre in Nottingham, UK, suggested treating appendicitis with antibiotics. This was only for uncomplicated forms of the disease.
The original article is presented on this page.