Use of gastroscopy in a community: a population-based study in Olmsted County, Minnesota.

We determined the use of gastroscopy in a defined population (Olmsted County, Minnesota) during the 3-year period 1978 through 1980. In slightly more than 271,000 person-years of observation, 418 residents underwent gastroscopy on 487 separate occasions. When age- and sex-adjusted to the structure of the US white population in 1980, the utilization rate was 215.9 per 100,000 person-years. With extrapolation of these data, approximately 500,000 gastroscopies would be expected to be performed in the United States each year.