Table 1.
Demographic characteristics of patients and controls answering bowel disease questionnaires
| Irritable bowel syndrome patients | Functional dyspepsia patients | Organic disease patients | Patients lost to follow-up | All Patientss | Control group | |
| Number of subjects | 55 | 17 | 37 | 14 | 128 | 50 |
| Sex | ||||||
| male (%) : female (%) | 18 (33) : 37 (67) | 9 (53) : 8 (47) | 19 (51) : 18 (49) | 7 (50) : 7 (50) | 56 (43) : 72 (57) | 29 (58) : 21 (42) |
| Residence | ||||||
| rural (%) | 34 (62) | 8 (47) | 23 (62) | 6 (43) | 73 (57) | 18 (36) |
| Education | ||||||
| none or primary (%) | 39 (71) | 14 (82) | 29 (78) | 11 (79) | 95 (74) | 23 (46) |
| Age, median (mean, SE) | 46 (49, 1.6) | 58 (56, 3.3) | 63 (58, 2.8) | 54 (56, 4.3) | 54 (53, 1.3) | 50 (48, 2.5) |
sOf the 128 patients who agreed to participate and answered the questionnaire, no conclusive diagnosis was reached for four subjects and one person diagnosed as having both dyspepsia and organic disease was omitted from the study. The only evidence of a difference between the patient groups for the demographic variables was in the age distributions. *p < 0.05, chi-square **p < 0.0005, chi-square test