Figure 1

Characteristics of the study subjects. (A and B) Histograms showing the distribution of age (A) and duration of pain (B) in the study subjects. IQR, interquartile range. (C) Bar chart showing the proportion of study subjects with the indicated characteristics on admission. (D and E) Pie chart showing the distribution of blood groups (D) and size of perforation in the study subjects (E). At the bottom of panel E is given the distribution of the site of perforation. * represents the four subjects in which the site of perforation could not be determined intra-opeartively.