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This paper describes the clinical presentation of 360 patients suffering from "dyspepsia" at the time of their initial visit to two hospitals in Yorkshire. Disease categories studied were cholecystitis, duodenal ulcer, gastric ulcer, gastric cancer, and "functional" dyspepsia, with at least 50 patients in each category. The findings of this series are contrasted with "textbook" descriptions of these conditions. Some contrasts are quite surprising-for example, most of the 360 patients claimed that their pain was not aggravated by food. It is suggested that one reason for diagnostic error in this area of medicine is that clinicians have a faulty mental "database" of information with regard to the presentation of the various diseases concerned.
Horrocks et al. (Sun,) studied this question.