APPENDICITIS CASES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21225, 4 July 1932, Page 6

APPENDICITIS CASES.

DISCUSSION BY DOCTORS. CRAZE FOR OPERATIONS. K ING EDWARD'S ILLNESS. Eminent surgeons in London have b%en keenly interested by the disclosure that the appendix of King Edward was nofc removed in the serious operation p er . farmed on him in June, 1902. The operation caused the postponement of the Coronation from June 26 to August 9. This secret was revealed by Sir James Berry, consulting surgeon to the Royal Free Hospital, in the annual oration ,to the Medical Society of London, during which he contended that operations for the removal of the appendix are carried onfc too frequently. A famous surgeon who was in intimate touch with Buckingham Palace when the operation on King Edward was performed stated that Sir Jamus Berry's warning on the danger of rushing into operations for the removal of the appendix deserved the closest consideration. "When King Edward was taken ill," he said, "the surgeons correctly diagnosed that he was suffering from appendicitis, but a considerable period elapsed before an operation wis carried out. "Thti King first complained of abdominal discomfort on June 14 and appendicitis was diagnosed on June 18. The operation was carried out on June 24, when E.n abscess was reached and opened. The appendix was found to be punctured, but to have removed it would have seriously added to the gravity of the operation.

"Thd surgeons decided that no good purposis would be served by removing the appendix and limited the . operation »to treatment of the abscess." The house surgeon of a London hospital said: "There are many who hold the opinion that the King would have died if the appendix had been removed. Instead lie lived for nearly eight years. "Uniartunately, it became the fashionable thing to have appendicitis and" there were surgeons who held the view that immediate operations were necessary for the removal of the appendix. Surgical opinion is now drifting back to the belief that it is unwise to operate at once, but thure ifi still perhaps too much of an inclination to operate at any and all stages ofr the illness. "The statistics published by the Regis- - show tha.t in 1930 there wire 2941 deaths from appendicitis in England and Wiles. There are many of us who heartily endorse the words of Sir James Berry when he expressed the belief that the pre valent surgical treatment of appendicitis; though still holding the position of an idol, is an idol of which the pedesital is beginning to totter."