Managing acute appendicitis during the COVID-19 pandemic in Jiaxing, China

Table 1 Emergency preoperative screening results

Appendicitis type	Treatment, medical/surgery	Postoperative diagnosis, suppurative/perforated appendicitis	Unqualified total	Screening type
				CT	Fever	Epidemiology
Simple (76)	9/67	66/1	5	0	5	0
Complex (14)	0/14	0/14	1	0	1	0

CT: Computed tomography.

Table 2 The characteristics comparison of appendectomies patients between 2019 and 2020

Period	2019	2020	χ²/t	P value
Age in yr	37.7 ± 19.8	40.9 ± 19.9	1.13	0.26
Male/female	63/58	54/27	4.244	0.039
Children/adults	19/102	12/69	0.029	0.864
Local/nonlocal	116/5	79/2	0.058	0.81
Suppurative appendicitis, male/female	58/53	40/26	1.169	0.28
Perforated appendicitis, male/female	5/5	14/1	6.343	0.012
Suppurative/perforated pediatric appendicitis	18/1	10/2	1.063	0.302
Suppurative/perforated appendicitis	111/10	66/15	4.704	0.03

Table 3 Surgery process comparison between 2019 and 2020

Year	Cases, n	Surgical method, n, open/laparoscope	Operating time in h	Blood loss, mL	Short-term complications, yes/no
2019	121	7/114	60.8 ± 22.0	11.5 ± 6.6	4/117
2020	81	12/69	61.3 ± 27.3	14.9 ± 13.0	3/78
χ2/t		4.643	0.137	2.396	0.000
P value		0.031	0.891	0.017	1.000

Table 4 Hospital stay and cost comparison between 2019 and 2020

Period	Cases, n	Hospital stay in d	Cost in RMB
2019	121	5.4 ± 3.0	11196.4 ± 3685.0
2020	81	6.1 ± 3.7	11737.4 ± 5348.1
T		1.551	0.851
P		0.122	0.396