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VIII.41 - Dyspepsia

from Part VIII - Major Human Diseases Past and Present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Kenneth F. Kiple
Affiliation:
Bowling Green State University, Ohio
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Summary

Derived from Greek roots meaning “difficult digestion,” dyspepsia has long served as a synonym for indigestion, one of the most common – and etiologically varied – of human miseries. It has thus been as regularly employed to label the symptoms of diverse organic disorders as to identify a distinct disease, with the result that some gastroenterologists find the word uselessly elastic: “This is really a meaningless term because it has so many meanings.” The majority of practitioners, however, have reached a consensus to use dyspepsia to denote either the ailment of functional indigestion or the symptoms of peptic ulcer.

Distribution and Incidence

Peptic ulcer dyspepsia is rare in people under the age of 20, but by age 30, 2 percent of the males and 0.5 percent of the females in a population have developed the condition. For men, the incidence increases steadily with age, reaching a peak of around 20 percent in the sixth decade of life. The incidence for women remains low, about 1 percent, until menopause, after which it climbs as rapidly as in men. A morbidity rate of nearly 14 percent has been reported in women in the age group 70 to 79. Death from peptic ulcer occurs three times as often in men as women.

The prevalence of functional dyspepsia, by contrast, is uncertain. Having no distinct pathology, being neither communicable nor reportable, and only occasionally motivating its victims to seek medical help, it does not generate statistics. The widely shared clinical impression is that women are affected more than men, and people under the age of 40 more than those over age 40.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1993

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References

Bierce, Ambrose. 1911. The devil’s dictionary. Cleveland.Google Scholar
Coghill, N. F. 1969. Dyspepsia. In Diseases of the digestive system, ed. Ware, Martin, 1–7. London.Google Scholar
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Horrocks, J. W., and DeDombal, F. T.. 1978. Clinical presentation of patients with “dyspepsia.”Gut 19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jones, F. Avery, Gummer, J. W. P., and Lennard-Jones, J. E.. 1968. Clinical gastroenterology, 2d edition. Oxford.Google Scholar
Mendeloff, Albert. 1983. Epidemiology of functional gastrointestinal disorders. In Functional disorders of the digestive tract, ed. Chey, William, 13–19. New York.Google Scholar
Philip, A. P. W. 1825. A treatise on indigestion and its consequences, 5th edition. Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Sleisinger, Marvin, and Fordtran, John. 1973. Gastrointestinal disease. Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Spiro, Howard. 1977. Clinical gastroenterology, 2d edition, New York.Google Scholar
Susser, Mervyn, and Stein, Zeno. 1962. Civilization and peptic ulcer. Lancet 1.Google ScholarPubMed
Warren, Ira, and Small, A. E.. 1873. The household physician.Boston.Google Scholar
Wightman, K. J. R., and Jeejeebhoy, K. N.. 1973. Assessment of symptoms. In Gastroenterology, ed. Bogoch, Abraham, 9–41. New York.Google Scholar

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  • Dyspepsia
  • Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Cambridge World History of Human Disease
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521332866.103
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  • Dyspepsia
  • Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Cambridge World History of Human Disease
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521332866.103
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Dyspepsia
  • Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Cambridge World History of Human Disease
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521332866.103
Available formats
×