Surgeons in China had a 7-year-old boy's CT scan showing an inflamed appendix. Once they were inside his abdomen with a laparoscope, the appendix seemed to have vanished. It was not behind the colon, not in its usual spot, and not where the colon's muscle bands normally lead.
It turned out to be sealed entirely beneath the outer layer of the cecum, the pouch where the large intestine begins. Doctors at Wuhan Children's Hospital described the case in a report in Frontiers in Surgery published Sept. 3. They called it "one of the most completely concealed appendiceal anatomical variants reported to date."
