Observer variation in assessment of results of surgery for peptic ulceration.

The results of surgery for peptic ulcer may be assessed in many ways. For instance, an assessment may focus on such factors as mortality and morbidity immediately after operation. Early postoperative mortality is, however, low-whatever the operation-and most workers have therefore concentrated on the medium and long-term results of surgery and have dealt with the presence or absence of symptoms attributable to recurrent ulceration or the operative procedure itself, together with the severity of these symptoms. The patient's overall status has usually also been graded, the most popular grading system being that devised by Visick.1 As little has been done to assess the reproducibility of these methods of assessment we carried out observer variation studies in a series of 170 patients seen at gastric follow-up clinics in York. We report here our findings.