[Sonography of the abdomen as a screening method].

Abdominal ultrasonic screening of patients clinically asymptomatic of abdominal disease was performed in 5 720 subjects. In these asymptomatic persons pathological ultrasonic findings were reported in 47.1% of all cases, but these were mostly without clinical relevance. This is especially true for diffuse liver disease (30.9%), asymptomatic gallstones (6.1%), and typical renal cysts (5.7%). Asymptomatic malignant abdominal tumours (0.2% or 13 cases) were detected very rarely, and were found to be mostly renal carcinomas.