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A simultaneous combined pancreatic test can be performed in one morning with only one intubation of the duodenum. The test includes the measurement of exocrine pancreatic secretion of bicarbonate, enzymes, and radioactive selenium, pancreatic scanning, hypotonic duodenography, and cytology of the duodenal aspirate. In the first 70 patients it was found that a single secretion test was of only limited value in detecting pancreatic disease; cytology was the most reliable and scanning the least reliable single test; and that the combined test provided near-complete discrimination between patients with no pancreatic disease, with chronic pancreatitis, and with carcinoma of the pancreas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A questionnaire was used to study the choice and use of gastric function tests by members of the British Society of Gastroenterology. Pentagastrin has largely replaced older drugs as the stimulant of choice for evoking maximal acid secretion. Insulin tests are being used in situations where they are unlikely to provide useful clinical information. Fewer physicians than surgeons measure gastric secretion, and they use tests less often. The reluctance of physicians to test patients with uninvestigated dyspepsia or gastric ulcer seems justified, but in patients having dyspepsia with negative -ray films, or after gastrectomy or vagotomy, the greater investigative keenness of surgeons seems commendable. Only half the surgeons ever try to assess the completeness of their vagotomies, and in only one-third of this half is it their usual practice. Criticism is made of the practice of routine measurement of acid in patients with duodenal ulcer, and of the use of acid measurements to decide whether a patient should have surgery or which type of operation should be performed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Exocrine pancreatic function was studied in 14 inpatients with newly diagnosed maturity onset diabetes mellitus. Five patients had clinical and biochemical evidence of pancreatic disease (two carcinoma, three pancreatitis). The other nine patients had no clinical pancreatic disease but all except one had at least one abnormal result of pancreatic function tests. None of this group with idiopathic diabetes mellitus developed any clinical evidence of exocrine pancreatic disease over the next five years. Mild abnormalities of exocrine pancreatic function in newly diagnosed patients with diabetes but without clinical evidence of pancreatic disease do not usually develop into overt pancreatic disease, and are therefore probably clinically unimportant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A formal metabolic study of carbenoxolone sodium (Biogastrone) 300 mg./day has been performed for 17 days on a woman with gastric ulcer who in a previous 21-day trial, on a 52-mEq sodium diet, showed weight gain, retention, and rise in plasma sodium and chloride concentrations, as well as hypokalaemia without change in potassium balance. In the present trial sodium intake was restricted to 26 mEq/day; while plasma electrolyte changes of lesser degree still occurred, there was no retention of water, sodium, or chloride. Aldosterone secretion in the control period was 202 μg./24 hours, and fell to 74 μg./24 hours after carbenoxolone, but plasma renin was unchanged. These results suggest that the mineralocorticoid effects of carbenoxolone (and presumably of liquorice and its other derivatives) are due to an intrinsic aldosterone-like action, and that, with sodium deprivation, aldosterone secretion is suppressed by a mechanism which is not renin-mediated—possibly hypokalaemia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]