Validación de la secuencia de Murphy en el diagn´stico clínico de apéndicitis aguda. Hospital Vicente Corral Moscoso. Cuenca. 2013

Abstract

Acute appendicitis requires emergency surgery, and Murphy’s sign is a fundamental diagnostic tool. General Objective: to validate the use of Murphy’s sign for the clinical diagnosis of acute appendicitis in the Vicente Corral Moscoso Hospital in Cuenca, Ecuador from July to December, 2013. Methodology: a descriptive study of the diagnostic test. Sample Pool: 315 patients over the age of 16. Unit of analysis: clinical records. Data collection was carried out with a valid form by means of a pilot study applying the Cronbach alfa method and considering 0.8 as the cutoff point. Data Analysis: Software SPSS 20.0 and Epidat 3. Results: 737 clinical records of patients with acute abdominal pain were analyzed. Results of the study showed that in 44.77% of the cases the cause was acute appendicitis, with an average patient age of 32 years ±15.07. The presence of Murphy’s sign in 294 patients gives a sensitivity ratio of 68.03% (62.53 – 73.53), a specificity of 71.43% (49.73 – 93.13), a positive predictive value of 97.09% (94.55 – 99.63), and a negative predictive value of 13.76% (6.84 – 20.69). Conclusions: According to this research, Murphy’s sign proves to be a valid diagnostic tool to assess a patient that presents symptoms of acute appendicitis, from the point of view of a valid test index of 68.25% (62.95 – 73.55).