Most physicians who encounter the entity which is the subject of this paper term it "malrotation of the colon." It could, perhaps, be more correctly entitled "malrotation of the midgut," since it is not always a failure of the rotational process of the colon that produces the symptomatology. In fact, one of the early descriptions of this condition is found in the medical literature of the late 18th century, when Neubauer1 described paraduodenal hernia. Again, Reid, in 1836, and Simpson, in 1839,1 described some of the rotational anomalies that occur as a basis for the symptomatic cases. Eventually, in 1904, Mohring1 reported the first successful surgical treatment of a midgut volvulus that was caused by a rotational abnormality.
Our interest has been drawn to this pathological condition by having seen five such cases in the past 12 months at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. We reviewed the hospital experience in