[Application of electrogastrography in pediatrics. Part II. The incidence of disturbed gastric myoelectrical activity in children suffering from recurrent abdominal pain].
The study was devoted to determine the incidence of an abnormal gastric myoelectrical activity (GMA) in children suffering from recurrent abdominal pain.


METHODS
Surface electrogastrograms were taken in the interdigestive state and after a meal stimulation in 187 children referred to the laboratory with the diagnosis of recurrent abdominal pain. The cohort comprised the following subgroups: age 6-11 years (33 boys and 36 girls), age 12-18 years (28 boys and 90 girls). Continuous variables characterizing quantitatively an electrogastrogram were recoded into categorical data sets, which were used further for construction of an arbitrary scale reflecting disturbances of an electrogastrographic recording: score 0--normal, score 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6 corresponding to a light, moderate, and severe disturbance of the GMA.


RESULTS
Abnormal electrogastrograms were found in just over a half of the examined children (54.5%). Nevertheless, light abnormalities (score 1-2) were predominant--42.8% of the whole cohort. Moderate abnormalities were revealed in almost every eight patient (11.8%), whereas no case of severely disturbed GMA was disclosed. On the other hand as much as 45.5% children did not exhibit any abnormality of the electrogastrogram. No statistically significant differences were found when the frequency distributions of particular degrees of the GMA disturbance were compared among groups of different age and gender.


CONCLUSIONS
A disclosure that an abnormal electrogastrogram is encountered in just over a half of the patients and the predominance of light disturbances within this group, implies that disturbed GMA is neither an inherent nor a pathognomonic pathological finding of the clinical picture of recurrent abdominal pain in children.
Centrum Pediatrii w Sosnowcu.
Iwona
I
Maliszewska
Beata
B
Krusiec-Swidergoł
Anna
A
Kasicka-Jonderko
Krzysztof
K
Jonderko
Barbara
B
Błońska-Fajfrowska
D015746:Abdominal Pain; D002648:Child; D005746:Gastric Emptying; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D010372:Pediatrics; D013270:Stomach