Observational studyAnnals of emergency medicine2019
Validation of the Pediatric Appendicitis Risk Calculator (pARC) in a Community Emergency Department Setting.
Observational study in Annals of emergency medicine, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Explainable Machine Learning for Predicting Complicated Appendicitis and Expected Hospital Length of Stay in Children: An Exploratory Single-Center Study.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Article
- Feasibility of Pediatric Diagnostic Quality Measurement in All United States Hospitals.Annals of emergency medicine · 2026Article
- Usefulness of Laboratory-Based Machine Learning for Detection and Severity Classification of Acute Appendicitis in a Resource-Limited Healthcare Setting.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Diagnostic value of pediatric appendicitis score for complicated appendicitis in preschool children.BMC pediatrics · 2026Article
- Appendicitis.Nature reviews. Disease primers · 2025Review
- Salivary Biomarkers in Pediatric Acute Appendicitis: Current Evidence and Future Directions.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Validation and Comparison of Pediatric Appendicitis Scores and Management Strategies (Project SPASMS): Protocol for a Prospective Multicenter Observational Study.JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
- MRI Adoption in Pediatric Appendicitis: Trends and Outcomes.Hospital pediatrics · 2025Article
- Clinical features and perforation predictors of appendicitis in infants and toddlers under 3: A retrospective two-center study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Exploring diagnostic stewardship in the emergency department evaluation of pediatric abdominal pain in a statewide quality collaborative.Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine · 2025Article
- [Appendix somewhat different-Excerpts from the history, controversies of the present and view to the future].Chirurgie (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2022Review
- Overuse of medical care in paediatrics: A survey from five countries in the European Academy of Pediatrics.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2022Article
- Diagnostic Performance of Emergency Physician Gestalt for Predicting Acute Appendicitis in Patients Age 5 to 20 Years.Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine · 2020Article
- A QI Partnership to Decrease CT Use for Pediatric Appendicitis in the Community Hospital Setting.Pediatric quality & safetyArticle
- Current Diagnostic Approaches and Challenges in the General Emergency Department Evaluation of Suspected Pediatric Appendicitis: A Qualitative Study.MDM policy & practiceArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
17 authors at 8 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
STUDY
objectiveThe pediatric Appendicitis Risk Calculator (pARC) is a validated clinical tool for assessing a child's probability of appendicitis. Our objective was to assess the performance of the pARC in community emergency departments (EDs) and to compare its performance with that of the Pediatric Appendicitis Score (PAS).
methodsWe conducted a prospective validation study from October 1, 2016, to April 30, 2018, in 11 community EDs serving general populations. Patients aged 5 to 20.9 years and with a chief complaint of abdominal pain and less than or equal to 5 days of right-sided or diffuse abdominal pain were eligible for study enrollment. Our primary outcome was the presence or absence of appendicitis within 7 days of the index visit. We reported performance characteristics and secondary outcomes by pARC risk strata and compared the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves of the PAS and pARC.
resultsWe enrolled 2,089 patients with a mean age of 12.4 years, 46% of whom were male patients. Appendicitis was confirmed in 353 patients (16.9%), of whom 55 (15.6%) had perforated appendixes. Fifty-four percent of patients had very low (<5%) or low (5% to 14%) predicted risk, 43% had intermediate risk (15% to 84%), and 4% had high risk (≥85%). In the very-low- and low-risk groups, 1.4% and 3.0% of patients had appendicitis, respectively. The area under the ROC curve was 0.89 (95% confidence interval 0.87 to 0.92) for the pARC compared with 0.80 (95% confidence interval 0.77 to 0.82) for the PAS.
conclusionThe pARC accurately assessed appendicitis risk for children aged 5 years and older in community EDs and the pARC outperformed the PAS.
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