[The history and presence of the surgery of hiatal hernias and the oesophageal reflux disease (author's transl)].

Attention has been drawn to some milestones in the history of the surgical treatment of hiatal hernias with special regard to the Czech literature. Hiatal hernias were mentioned for the first time in the paper published by the Czech anatomist J. T. Klinkosch in Prague in 1764. In our literature and probably also in the worlds' literature, J. Simon was the first to describe his observations made in connection with hiatal hernias. In 1928, he reported on the interrelationship between the gastrooesophageal reflux and hiatal sliding hernias. Up to 1950, 13 patients with hiatal hernias were described in the Czech literature. Only two of them were operated on. In 1931, Leischner in Brno was the first to operate an incarcerated paraoesophageal hernia. At the 1st Clinic of Surgery of the Medical Facultý, Palacky University in Olomouc, 359 patients with hiatal hernias and the oesophageal reflux disease were operated on till the end of 1977. Of the total of the reports on this problem in our literature, 46% were published from our clinic.