Gastric Freezing for Duodenal Ulcer.

A cuRE without recourse to surgery is the aim of all concerned with the treatment of duodenal ulcer. A new step in this direction was the introduction of gastric freezing by Wangensteen and his group in I962 (Wangensteen, Peter, Nicoloff, Walder, Sosin and Bernstein, i962b; Peter, Bernstein, Sosin, Madsen, Walder and Wangensteen, I962). This relatively simple and apparently innocuous procedure had obvious attractions and has been pursued enthusiastically, especially in the U.S.A. However, the first flush of enthusiasm is now being tempered with some doubts and, in fact, there seems to be a definite swing away from gastric freezing. Much of this may be due to an uncritical and over-zealous approach in some quarters. A certain amount of the criticism is based on divergent results obtained in laboratory animals, some of which do not show any very obvious beneficial effect of gastric freezing. In this review the experimental basis of the technique is discussed along with the clinical results to date in the light of our limited experience.