“…The diagnosis of appendicitis became more common in the last quarter of the 19th century. Death rates from the disease increased during the first quarter of the 20th century, peaked in the thirties and declined progressively thereafter [1][2][3][4] . Regarding the last 2 decades of the 20th century, in particular, most reports from western countries, including the UK [5][6][7][8] , the Netherlands [1] , Canada [9] , the USA [10,11] , Australia [12] and Sweden [13] , show further decrease of the incidence of appendicitis, although the decrease rate has been more modest.…”