Table 1.

Characteristics of the study population*

	Group with
Characteristic	acute appendicitis	abdominal pain
Number	49	33
Male/female†	32/17	21/12
Age (median, range) (years)‡	10.8 (4.1-13.9)	9.0 (2.8-13.6)
In-hospital observation time (median, range)	4.0 h (15 min-3 d)	/

*Acute appendicitis – children with acute appendicitis. Abdominal pain – children with diagnosis of non-specific abdominal pain or sonographic mesenteric lymphadenitis; in-hospital observation time – time until the surgical procedure.

†P = 0.939, χ² test.

‡P = 0.019, one-way analysis of variance.