Dry Lips as a Possible New Clinical Sign in Diagnosis of Appendicitis in Adults: A Short Report

Background: Appendicitis is one of the most common causes of emergency abdominal surgery. Diagnosis before surgery has always been a problem. One of the symptoms in dealing with patients with suspected appendicitis is dry lips. Therefore, in this study, an attempt was made to investigate the relationship of this sign with appendicitis. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in a one year period. All the patients between 18 and 65 years of age with complaints of abdominal pain were included into the study. Possible diagnosis was appendicitis based on history, clinical examinations, and laboratory tests. Pathological results were recorded. Collected data were analyzed by descriptive statistics using SPSS-16 software. Results: In this study, 125 patients with preoperative diagnosis of appendicitis were evaluated. Mean age was 27±2 years and 65% (n=81) were male and 35% (n=44) were female. Final diagnosis based on pathologic examination revealed that 88.8% (n=111) were appendicitis cases and 11. 2% (n=14) were cases with normal appendix. Also, 92.79% (n=103) of patients who had appendicitis based on pathologic report had dry lips in preoperative examination and 21.24% (n=3) of patients with normal appendix in pathology had dry lips in perioperative examination. Sensitivity of dry lips was 92.79% and specifity was 78.57%. Conclusion: Early diagnosis and appendectomy before gangrene or rupture of the appendix will reduce complications of this disease. Therefore, early diagnosis of this disease is important. Based on this study, it is concluded that dry lips can be a diagnostic sign along with other signs.