Diabetes is associated with perforated appendicitis: evidence from a population-based study

Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between perforated appendicitis and patient with diabetes using a population-based data set. Methods: This study used data from the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2005 in Taiwan. We identified 4,806 patients hospitalized with acute appendicitis. The independent variable was whether a patient had ever received a diagnosis of diabetes before the index hospitalization. We performed a conditional logistic regression model to explore the odds ratio and its corresponding 95% confidence interval of perforated appendicitis. Results: Rates of perforated appendicitis for patients with and those without diabetes were 46.2% and 28.3%, respectively. A chi-square test revealed that there was a significant difference in rates of perforated appendicitis between patients with and those without diabetes (P < .001). The conditional logistic regression model revealed that the adjusted odds ratio of perforated appendicitis for patients with diabetes was 1.35 (95% confidence interval = 1.11 to 1.65) compared with patients without diabetes. Conclusions: Our study demonstrated that a history of diabetes is an important factor with regard to the rate of perforated appendicitis.