ANY SIMPLE technical procedure is of value when it aids in establishing a clinical diagnosis without the necessity of an exploratory operation. It is our aim to show how pneumoperitoneum can be adapted to children for this purpose in various sex-endocrine disturbances. To the best of our knowledge, such a procedure has not been described in pediatric literature, and no mention is made of its use in children in gynecological writings and texts.
From a historical standpoint, diagnostic pneumoperitoneum is not new. Alvarez1 first introduced the use of carbon dioxide as the gas for pneumoperitoneum in 1921, and Case2 proclaimed pneumoperitoneum as a progressive step in roentgenologic diagnosis. Stewart and Stein,3 Stein and Arens,4 Peterson,5 Lewis,6 Sante,7 Faulkner,8 Martin,9 and Rubin10 contributed to improvement of the technique. Most of the credit for emphasizing the diagnostic potentialities of induced pneumoperitoneum and