Computer-aided Diagnosis of Acute Abdominal Pain

This paper reports a controlled prospective unselected real-time comparison of human and computer-aided diagnosis in a series of 304 patients suffering from abdominal pain of acute onset.The computing system''s overall diagnostic accuracy (91·8%) was significantly higher than that of the most senior member of the clinical team to see each case (79·6%). It is suggested as a result of these studies that the provision of such a system to aid the clinician is both feasible in a real-time clinical setting, and likely to be of practical value, albeit in a small percentage of cases.     

Acute Abdominal Pain in Childhood,with Special Reference to Cases not due to Acute Appendicitis

Appendicitis is not the only common cause of acute abdominal pain in childhood. Almost equally common is an acute episode which in its early stages resembles acute appendicitis but which subsides without treatment in 24 to 48 hours. The clinical features of this syndrome are contrasted with those of appendicitis. The two conditions cannot always be distinguished on clinical grounds, leading to admission to hospital for observation and the finding of a normal appendix in 14% of operations for suspected appendicitis. Reasons are given for abandoning attempts to diagnose acute mesenteric adenitis at the bedside.