Surgery has been the standard treatment for appendicitis for over 100 years. And now according to a new study, most patients could be treated with antibiotics only.

It is a Finnish study that provides best proof regarding its finding. The study has been published on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It was conducted on 530 patients aged 18 to 60 who agreed to undergo treatment through antibiotics or surgery and that was decided randomly.

It was found in the study that three out of four who were treated with antibiotics recovered easily. The researchers found they are not suffering from pain anymore. It was also found that no one who underwent surgery after taking antibiotics was in a less advantageous position for having waited.

Dr. Edward Livingston, a surgeon and editor at the journal who is not related to the study, wrote in an editorial accompanying the report, “The time has come to consider abandoning routine appendectomy for patients with uncomplicated appendicitis”.

The study has come in the middle of increasing questions regarding the regular use of surgery for treating appendicitis. The condition affects nearly 300,000 Americans a year, troubling 1 out of 10 adults at some point in their lives.

According to Dr. Paulina Salminen, a surgeon at Turku University Hospital in Finland and lead author of the new study, the new findings are applicable only to uncomplicated appendicitis. The researchers left out the 20% of patients who had complicated cases i.e. people with abdominal abscesses or perforated appendixes and the ones with a little, rocklike blockage of the appendix.