Murphy's sign, acute cholecystitis and elderly people.

The presentation of acute abdomen in elderly people differs from that in younger patients. We retrospectively assessed how the presence or absence of Murphy's sign affected initial diagnosis of acute cholecystitis in elderly patients. In the presence of Murphy's sign, diagnostic accuracy for acute cholecystitis was 80% dropping to 34% when the sign was negative. The positive predictive value of the test in elderly people was 0.58, with a sensitivity of 0.48 and a specificity of 0.79. In elderly patients, a positive Murphy's sign is useful, but a negative sign should be treated with caution and other diagnostic tests and promptly. There should be cautious interpretation of classical signs in elderly patients.