“Preoperative CT quite consistently has been shown to lower the negative appendectomy rate among women. Relatively few studies, however, have shown a lower negative appendectomy rate with preoperative CT for both sexes. Furthermore, any suggested utility of preoperative CT in men is contradicted by a number of studies that have shown that men derive no benefit from preoperative CT when there is clinical suspicion of acute appendicitis. Nevertheless, CT is used routinely among men with suspected appendicitis at our institution and has been assumed by both surgeons and radiologists to be a useful practice. Therefore, we performed this study to determine the negative appendectomy rates of patients who did and did not undergo preoperative CT and to determine, more specifically, whether men benefit from preoperative CT.”

“In summary, we found that the negative appendectomy rate was decreased for adult patients who underwent preoperative CT (22/465 [4.7%]) compared with patients who did not undergo preoperative imaging (6/47 [12.8%]; p = 0.03). Although most prior studies have suggested that CT is efficacious only in decreasing the negative appendectomy rate among women, our study shows that adult men benefit from CT as well, as evidenced by a decrease in negative appendectomies among men who underwent preoperative CT to 2.5% (6/237), compared with 11.9% (5/42; p = 0.01) for those who did not undergo preoperative imaging.”

Webb, Emily M et al. “The negative appendectomy rate: who benefits from preoperative CT?.” AJR. American journal of roentgenology vol. 197,4 (2011): 861-6. Full Text at Emory.