CONGENITAL DEFICIENCY OF THE DIAPHRAGM

The recent and considerable increase in our knowledge of diaphragmatic hernia has been due in a large part to information acquired during routine roentgen-ray studies of the gastro-intestinal tract (Bevan,¹ Giffin,² Howk and Herring³). It has been shown by the roentgen ray, following an opaque meal, that patients reporting with vague epigastric or indigestional complaints may have either the stomach or intestines or both in the thoracic cavity. These studies have demonstrated that the thoracic contents may vary with the position of the patient, indicating a fairly wide defect in the abdominothoracic partition. More often they have shown that a portion of the stomach alone is involved in the hernia, which would seem to indicate that the defect lies at the esophageal opening (Bevan,¹ Borden,⁴ Frank,⁵ Hume⁶). A further stimulus to our knowledge of this condition was brought about through the study and