Evaluation of Morphine Effect on Diagnosis of Acute Appendicitis

Acute appendicitis is one of the most common etiologies of attending of patients with abdominal pain to Emergency Department. In order to diagnose, it, it is necessary to obtain patient's history, and perform physical examination and paraclinical tests that would waste time. Therefore because of the severe abdominal pain in these patients and the fear of some surgeons in giving narcotics (because of missed diagnosis in examination), this research was done to prove the fact that early administration of morphine reduces pain and discomfort of the patients without any disturbance in time and accuracy of diagnosis. Patients and This randomized controlled clinical trial was done on patients who came to emergency department of Hazrat Rasool Akram hospital because of abdominal pain and whose alvarado scores were above 6 and were operated with diagnosis of acute appendicitis. They were divided to 2 groups: double blind group that received 4 mg morphine and placebo group. The time of intervention and diagnosis was noted. Biopsy samples were sent to pathologist for reports. Results were analyzed by parametric tests(t-test and Chi Square) via SPSS software. Overall 200 patients were enrolled in research and divided into two groups who received placebo & morphine. There is no difference inregard to mean of age and distribution of gender between two groups(p>0.05). There is no difference between two groups inregard to percentage of pathology findings(p>0.05). Also the mean duration from our intervention to time of diagnosis of surgery team was not significantly different between two groups(P>0.05). Our research shows that use of morphine does not affect the accuracy and time of surgical diagnosis. Thus it seems that we can use opiate analgesics in patients with abdominal pain, suspected of appendicitis.