THE incidence of the nephrotic syndrome and its impact on the patient, his family, and the community were topics investigated as part of a survey of selected long-term diseases and conditions of children. The survey encompassed the total child population under 16 years of age in Erie County, a large metropolitan area in western New York state. The nephrotic syndrome has been selected for initial presentation in some depth because it is of inherent clinical and epidemiological interest and because it illustrates so graphically the type of information found about some of the other conditions studied.
The Erie County Survey of Long-Term Childhood Illness was undertaken in 1962 by the Erie County Department of Health in cooperation with the New York State Department of Health. The major objective of the three-year study was the determination of the incidence and prevalence of about 70 long-term conditions of childhood for which services