What are the symptoms?
The specific symptoms for appendicitis are:
- Abdominal pain starting from the navel zone and spreading over the lower right portion
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Low appetite
- Constipation or diarrhoea
- Incapacity to release gas
- Abdominal swelling
- These symptoms may be followed by low fever.
It is not necessary for all the people with appendix problems to gather all these symptoms. There are fluctuations of pain, which gains and loses intensity in case of sudden movements, when the patient takes deep breaths, coughs or sneezes. With appendicitis, the abdomen presents an increased sensitivity and the person can present a “tenesmus”, which represents the sensation of intestinal movement that can banish the unpleasant feeling of “downward urge”; in these conditions, laxatives and painkillers are not appropriated. The opinion of a specialist is the best solution in these cases.
Special cases
When a patient is already affected by a different disease, he may lack some or all the symptoms and just feel uncomfortable as it is the case of the following conditions:
- Persons that are on steroids or other immunosuppressive medication
- Persons that suffered transplants
- Diabetics
- HIV positive persons
- People suffering from obesity
- Persons affected by cancer, or on chemotherapy
Particular problems may appear in small children, old people or in case of pregnancy.
Because it is more difficult or even impossible to determine a proper symptoms record in case of babies or small children, due to their incapacity of communicating, the examination performed by a specialist is mostly based on less general signs that might indicate appendicitis, such as tiredness, loss of appetite, vomiting, sometimes constipation and little faecalis accompanied by mucus. Because there are a large variety of symptoms among children, the parents should take him immediately to see a specialist in case off the smallest suspicion of appendicitis.
In case of pregnancy, the diagnosis is more difficult to formulate because the coincidence of symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. When it is really appendicitis, the signs are untypical for these women. It is necessary to contact a doctor in case of abdominal pain located in the lower right side especially in case of third trimester of pregnancy.
In case of old people the situation is more complicated because the symptoms are almost absent which often drives them to ignore the possibility of appendicitis until it gets critical. The doctor should be called immediately in case of even slight signs.
For the special cases, of persons also affected by other serious conditions should be more careful about unusual symptoms and alert immediately their doctor.