ABSTRACT
This Study was conducted to study the importance of infectious diseases in Korea by computing the records of ambulatory and hospitalized patients at two university hospitals. Infectious diseases were 74.7% and non-infectious diseases were 25.3% at Severance Hospital, while infectious diseases were 82.7% and non-infectious diseases were 17.3% at the Wonju Christian Hospital. Among the infectious diseases, viral infection were 72.4% bacterial infections were 24.7% at Severance Hospital, while viral infections were 81.8% and bacterial infections 17.4% at Wonju Christain Hospital in 1980. Of the five major viral infections, upper respiratory infections, gastroenteritis, pneumonia, bronchiolitis, and hepatitis were in that order at both Severance and Wonju Christian Hospital and the incidence of each disease was similar. Of the ten major bacterial infections, tuberculosis was ranked the first, pneumonia, bronchitis, pertussis, shigellosis, sepsis, meningitis, urinary tract infections, impetigo and salmonellosis were in that order at Severance Hospital, while tuberculosis, pneumonia, shigellosis, meningitis, bronchitis, sepsis, pertussis, urinary tract infections, salmonellosis and cellulitis were in that order at Wonju Christian Hospital. The number of diseases was closely related to the number of infectious diseases which also had a close relationship to the number of epidemic diseases in 1980. In the relationship of infectious diseases to age, younger children have more infectious diseases than older children.