A series of abdominal roentgenograms recently encountered at the San Francisco Hospital led us to review the subject of the differential diagnosis of intestinal obstruction from the roentgenologic standpoint and to make a tabular study.
From approximately 250 cases in which either a clinical or a roentgen diagnosis of intestinal obstruction was made, 100 cases were selected in which satisfactory roentgenograms were available and in which the diagnoses were established by observation made at operation or at postmortem examination or by what we considered incontrovertible clinical evidence. The distribution of these 100 cases according to final diagnosis is given in table 1.
The criteria by which the roentgenologic diagnosis of acute intestinal obstruction may be made have been outlined by Laurell,1 Wangensteen,2 Granger,3 Eliason and Johnson4 and many others. The differential diagnosis between distention from mechanical obstruction and distention from peritonitis (paralytic ileus) or from another