Incidence of Diverticulitis

The hospital admission rates for symptomatic colonic diverticulitis (International Code No. 572.1) in the populations served by the main teaching hospitals in Fiji, Singapore, Nigeria and North East Scotland have been estimated. In non-Europeans the condition is very rare occurring in about only one person in a million per year. It is some forty times commoner in Europeans living in the Tropics, and about eighty times more common in Scotland. It is considered that the difference is due principally to the greater age and low-residue diet of the European populations.