The incidence of infantile pyloric stenosis in the north-east of Scotland.

Wallgren (1941), in Gothenburg, found that pyloric stenosis occurred in four out of every 1,000 infants born alive, but in this country Davison (1946) in Newcastle found the incidence to be 28 per 1,000 live births, and Lawson (1951) in Dundee found it to be as low as 1per 1,000 live births. Wallgren, Davison and Lawson all claim that their area was particularly suitable for the calculation of the incidence of the disease and that few cases can have been missed. MacMahon, Record and McKeown (1951) found the incidence in Birmingham increasing from 2 1 per 1,000 live births in 1941 to 4 2 in 1949. In the Aberdeen area the Royal Aberdeen Hospital for Sick Children is the only children's hospital serving the City of Aberdeen and the counties of Aberdeen and Banff, and it is certain that all diagnosed cases of infantile pyloric stenosis from that area are seen at the hospital out-patient department or treated in the hospital. In a survey of pyloric stenosis covering 16 years from 1938 to 1953, it was found that the number of cases in this area rose steadily. For purposes of comparison the cases are divided into four groups, each group covering a four-year period. Cases in Group I occurred in the period 1938 to 1941, in Group II in 1942 to 1945, in Group III in 1946 to 1949, and in Group IV in 1950 to 1953. As shown in Table I the actual number of cases increased from 62 in Group I to 120 in Group IV, and the incidence, calculated per 1,000 live births,