appendicitis. and yet less than half of all people with appendicitis have the classic pattern. where were you experiencing the pain? i had pain all over my abdomen instead of just my right quadrant. the way that they ruled out appendicitis was a jump test. i was asked to jump, and i was able to maybe get one inch off the ground. and just that ruled out appendicitis for all the doctors. and that s when they just declared it was a viral infection. but reporter: dr. prashan mahajan heads the pediatric emergency medicine department at the university of michigan. he says misdiagnosis can occur in part because of diagnostic momentum. you anchor yourself on that particular diagnosis and it is possible in some instances that it is taking you away from the condition that the patient has. reporter: it was in part that diagnostic momentum that led to the doctors missing the early signs of appendicitis in alice. every year roughly 25,000
us was the fact that the doctors discounted appendicitis based on the kind of test that they had available in the year 1300. they just poked her and v abdomen and then poked the other side. well, she s feeling pain everywhere, therefore it can t be appendicitis. oh, she s able to jump an inch off the ground, therefore it can t be appendicitis. that s not enough. and we know from dr. mahajan s research anywhere from 5 to 15% of the time appendicitis does not present in this standard way. so i think alice s main message is doctors, parents, kids know that appendicitis does not always present in a standard way and doctors, update your standard of care so that you re not just backing into a diagnosis. i can tell you i ve already gotten calls because people knew we were working on this story from heads of big children s hospitals around the country
children develop appendicitis, and according to the study published in 2020 by dr. mahajan, roughly 5% of the time, that s 1,000 times a year, the story mirrors the story of what happened to alice tapper next. we went into the hospital, and we just assumed the doctors knew what they were talking about. they kind of backed into a diagnosis of a viral infection. and janet and i would say are you sure it s not appendicitis? because her pediatrician thinks it might be. is there some reason we can t give her antibiotics? is there some reason we can t get an x-ray or a scan? we see the child every day. so i knew her skin coloring was different. i knew her belly was distended even though she s a smaller-framed child. those are the things we kept saying. reporter: in fact, more than three excruciating days passed in the hospital without much more than pain relievers before the tapper family was finally able to get some answers. i m a journalist. so i was able to get the number