Your doctor will make a diagnosis based on your symptoms. Sometimes, people think that they might be having food poisoning. You may also have diarrhea, fever, nausea, and a reduced appetite. The pain may then move into your right lower abdomen. The pain might be mild at first, but then it gets sharp and severe before not too long.
Usually, the first symptom is pain around your belly button. So, what are the signs that you have appendicitis? Well, this condition can be fairly hard to diagnose, especially in children, older people, and women of childbearing age. If the appendix is not removed, it can leak bacteria and infect your entire belly, which can be very life threatening. It needs to be removed when it becomes swollen or infected. The appendix is a small, finger-shaped organ that comes out of the first part of the large intestine. Call your doctor for any severe pain in your abdomen, especially if you also have a fever, vomiting, constipation, dizziness, or other severe symptoms.Īppendectomy, the removal of the small pouch attached to the beginning of your large intestine when you have an acute bout of appendicitis is one of the most common emergency abdominal surgeries. That's why you don't want to wait until your appendix has already burst to get treated. You may also develop an abscess or other complications.
If your appendix has ruptured, it may take you longer to recover. Once you've had your appendix taken out, you should feel a lot better. Don't worry about going through life without an appendix. It's important to treat the appendicitis quickly because you can develop a collection of pus called an abscess in your abdomen once your appendix bursts.
You may be treated for an infection first, before your surgery. In fact, appendicitis is the number one cause of emergency abdominal surgery in the U.S. If you have appendicitis, the number one way to treat it is with surgery to remove your appendix. You may need imaging tests, such as a CT scan or ultrasound of your abdomen, so the doctor can see if the problem is with your appendix. To diagnose appendicitis, your doctor will ask about your symptoms and press on your abdomen, which will feel very tender. If that's the case, the pain will get start to get more and more intense. Just when you think you're getting better, your appendix may have actually burst.
You may also have nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or constipation, and a low fever. At first the pain may be minor, but it can get very severe and will usually drift downward to the bottom right part of your abdomen. If you've got appendicitis you'll usually have pain that's centered around the area of your belly button. When your appendix is blocked up, bacteria that normally live inside it start multiplying like crazy, and cause an infection. That blockage could be from feces, a foreign object, or, in rare cases, a tumor. You can get appendicitis if your appendix becomes blocked. The pain of appendicitis can make you quickly, and unpleasantly, familiar with this organ. But if your appendix were to become swollen and inflamed, it would probably move to the front of your mind. And you wouldn't have much reason to think about it, because it doesn't seem to do anything. You may never have given much thought to your appendix, the little pouch that's attached to the top of your large intestine.