Motility of the Empty Stomach in Normal and Malnourished Asthenic Children.

The problem is concerned with the motility of the empty stomach in normal children and in those who are of the asthenic type and in a malnourished condition, being underweight for the age and height. This preliminary report includes studies on 5 normal and 14 asthenic children. The age range was 4 to 14 years. In addition, there was one 17-year-old girl whose development and reactions were those of a child of 12 years.

The method used was that of Carlson. 1 A deflated balloon attached to one end of a rubber catheter was swallowed. The other end was attached by means of hard rubber tubing to a chloroform manometer fitted with a lever arranged to write on a moving smoked paper. The balloon was inflated at the beginning of the experiment and the pressure changes due to waves of contraction in the stomach were recorded. The experiments were run in the morning before breakfast after the child had fasted 14 to 16 hours. At least 3 experiments were performed on each child, each one lasting from 1 to 21/2 hours. Those in which vomiting and gagging occurred were discarded. Care was taken to have the child in good condition, determined by a restful preceding night, and a normal temperature.

The tracings as taken included records of the respirations and heart beats as well as the contraction waves of the stomach as described by Carlson. 1 Variations in the types of contractions as well as in the sequence of types I, II, III, of the thirty-second rhythm and of the twenty-second rhythm were obtained. In order to compare the activity of the normal and asthenic children a method of analysis of the tracings had to be worked out.