Prevention of appendicitis

In the past it was common to perform an incidental appendectomy in people under age 50 during the course of an abdominal operation for another illness—as long as the exposure was adequate and there were no specific contraindications. The declining lifetime risk of appendicitis now calls this practice into question. A related question concerns the appropriate course when a laparoscopy is performed for presumptive appendicitis and the appendix looks normal. The trend in this case is to leave the appendix intact—not to remove it prophylactically or on the assumption that the visual assessment may be inaccurate.