IT IS NOT surprising that there has been increasing awareness of the frequency of esophagitis with the internist's adoption of diagnostic esophagoscopy as his own procedure. Detection of esophagitis by "medical esophagoscopy," a technique which has become as simple and safe as gastroscopy, has helped explain for him the cause of several puzzling chest and upper abdominal problems, such as certain bizarre "cardiac" symptoms, some cases of hematemesis, dysphagia of the puerperium, and unexpectedly severe symptoms associated with hiatus hernia.
Classification of esophagitis is made difficult by the fact that, like other organs, the esophagus has its own established pattern of reacting to adverse influence, and the specific nature of the influence is not the main factor controlling tissue response. The result is that objective findings may be quite similar among patients with varying clinical pictures. The present communication deals with subacute erosive esophagitis, also known as "peptic" and "regurgitant"