Norman Swan

What a hero.

I mean, these days, the option exists to treat it with antibiotics.

We recently covered this on our sister podcast, The Health Report.

And the worry has been because when you get cancer in the appendix, it's a particularly unpleasant kind of cancer.

And it's not one of those cancers that's been rising.

And one of the theories here is that the trend to treat appendicitis with antibiotics has left appendices in place that may have malignant tissue.

whereas otherwise they would have been removed with appendicitis, preventing the onset of cancer.

Anyway, there's been a recent study suggesting that if that's the case, you can actually pick the people who may have a malignancy there, and it's usually a long course of symptoms in an older person, usually over the age of 60.

So you can eliminate that sort of risk.

But they have looked at the long-term effects of removing the appendix, and it is associated with inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn's disease, increased risk of infection, and increased risk of colorectal cancer.

Now, again, you've got to differentiate between what caused the appendicitis in the first place, what sort of people may get appendicitis, and whether or not that's the cause of inflammatory bowel disease, infection, and colorectal cancer.

So it's just an association.

It's not cause and effect.

But it emphasizes that it may not be harm-free removing the appendix.

But equally, if you've got untreated appendicitis, as you've just shown with your Russian friend, it can be pretty dangerous.

I must say, it's not a simple operation.

You can go in thinking that to the bottom right-hand corner of your abdomen, go in thinking...

It's going to just pop out at me when you go in there.

And sometimes, indeed, it does magically.

But sometimes, some people have got really long, almost koala-length appendices that go up under your bowel towards the liver.