Design: Retrospective study.
Setting: Teaching hospital, Sweden.
Objective: To find out if various diagnostic criteria could distinguish organic from non-organic causes of dyspepsia.
Subjects: 635 patients previously interviewed by computer questionnaire.
Interventions: Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy, laboratory tests, clinical examination.
Main outcome measure: Differentiation between organic and functional dyspepsia.
Results: 106 patients had functional dyspepsia. Of these 83 had ulcer-like dyspepsia, 76 motility-like dyspepsia, and 50 reflux-like dyspepsia. Eight patients had unspecified dyspepsia.
Conclusions: There was a considerable overlap between different subgroups, and the criteria did not differentiate between organic and non-organic causes of dyspepsia though the symptom criteria in most cases showed an independent value in discriminating between different subgroups. The clinical usefulness of the criteria remains to be shown.