My child has recurrent abdominal pain and nausea. Can he have appendicitis?
Of every 7 patients referred to us in our clinic with suspected recurrent appendicitis, we find that a single child is usually proved to have the disease. Pain mimicking that of recurrent / acute appendicitis may occur due to chronic constipation, mesenteric lymphadenopathy, respiratory tract infection, following gastroenteritis and sometimes following urinary tract infection. Nowadays diagnostic laparoscopy is a modality which is relatively minimally invasive and can be utilized to put all dilemmas to rest to directly look into the abdomen and find out the cause of pain.
