title: Presentation and diagnosis of acute abdominal pain in Finland: a computer aided study.
abstract: 326 patients presenting with acute abdominal pain to a hospital in Tampere were compared with others in England and Norway, and with a large series of 6097 cases collected under the auspices of the World Organization of Gastro-Enterology. The distribution of disease in these 326 Finnish patients bore remarkable similarities to the distribution in other countries. When subjected to a computer-aided diagnostic analysis, comparing Finnish patients with UK and world-wide data, as regards appendicitis, cholecystitis and nonspecific pain, the computer performed roughly as well as the clinicians diagnosing the same cases. It is concluded that these diseases therefore have a common presentation in Finland with that elsewhere. As regards small bowel obstruction however, the computer diagnosed only 22% of cases correctly, (compared with the accuracy of clinical diagnosis 73%). This leads us to conclude that this disease presents unusually in Scandinavia, and possible reasons are discussed.
mesh_terms: D000006:Abdomen, Acute / Q000175:diagnosis*; D001064:Appendicitis / Q000175:diagnosis; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005387:Finland; D006801:Humans; D007415:Intestinal Obstruction / Q000175:diagnosis; D007421:Intestine, Small; D009664:Norway; D010146:Pain / Q000175:diagnosis; D006113:United Kingdom