The main goals of this long term project are to elucidate the natural history and to investigate the pathophysiology of acute appendicitis, to improve the clinical diagnosis and to define the role of diagnostic imaging techniques and laparoscopy in the structured management of patients with suspicion of appendicitis.
Within this project we use epidemiologic techniques to analyse different aspects about appendicitis, like mortality, long term associations of appendicitis and appendectomy with other intestinal inflammatory conditions like inflammatory bowel disease and diverticulitis and to analyse the effects of the implementation of the laparoscopic technique in the management of appendicitis.
We also analyse the impact of environmental factors during infancy, mainly breastfeeding and exposure to tobacco, on the risk of having acute appendicitis later in life.
We use immunologic techniques to study the systemic and local inflammatory response in appendicitis to elucidate the pathogenesis of appendicitis and to find useful diagnostic markers of especially advanced appendicitis.
In prospective clinical multicenter studies we search means to improve the clinical diagnosis of appendicitis and to define the role of diagnostic imaging in the structured management of patients with suspicion of appendicitis.
