- Patients with sub-acute, intermittent or chronic pain; when predominant symptoms were attributable to some other cause even with concomitant presence of a cecal pathology; when predominant pathology was not cecal and patients with cecal pathology operated as an elective case were excluded from this study. Thus patients diagnosed to be having appendiceal stump blowout, perforation of base of appendix, ileocecal tuberculosis or intussusception were not included.