[Thickness of the pyloric muscle in relation to Chagas' disease]

The authors analyzed the thickness of the pyloric muscle of 139 patients with peptic ulcer or gastric cancer. Subtracting the muscular thickness of pylorus measured by a ruler from the thickness estimated by the formula, P.T.=0.0415 X W+2.9, where P.T. represents the thickness of the pyloric muscle in millimeters and W represents the weight of the body in kilograms, they had the deviation from normal, in mm. The muscles with deviations greater than 3 mm were considered hypertrophics. Comparing their material with those of Horwitz et al the authors observed a difference in the group of patients with duodenal ulcer without stenosis in which they obtained 16.5% cases with muscular hypertrophy. Surprisingly, those patients showed positivity of sorologic reactions to Chagas' disease in 83.3% of the cases. These results together with the work of Kunze which demonstrated in 1973 that Chagas' disease may be one of the causative factors of the pyloric muscular hypertrophy, make the authors attribute to the neurological disturbances caused by the American Tripanosomiasis the difference observed.