Background
: abdominal ultrasound test is commonly seen at the primary care unit by the family physician, the fatty liver is one of the most frepuent finding by its examination. Also the fatty liver is easily treated with the removal of offending agents, but there is few thesis about the causes of the fatty livers in our country. So the purpose of this study is to find the possible causes of the fatty livers.

Methods : 104 fatty liver cases(male 65, female 39) was selected from the total 1635 cases being diagnosed by the abdominal ultrasonography at the radiologic department of the Bucheon Daesung Hospital from Jily 1993 to June 1994 through the review of the patient's charts. And then fatty liver cases were classified according to Mittelstaedt's classification to group I(mild), group Ⅱ(moderate) and group Ⅲ(sever) and found out the causes of the fatty livers.

Results : The frequency of the fatty liver was about 6% of being the abdominal ultrasonographied patients and the average age of the subjects was 44.8 years olds. Distributions of the fatty liver groups were 61 cases(59%) as group I, 28 cases(27%) as group Ⅱ and 15 cases(15%) as group Ⅲ, respectively. There were oredrs in classifing the causes alcohol(21 subjects, 34%), obesity(21.34%), unknown(12.20%), Diabetes(4.7%), and others (3.5%) as group I, obesity(10.34%), alcohol(9%, 31%), diabetes(5.17%), unknown(4.14%) and drup(1.4%) as group Ⅱ, alcohol(4.27%), obesity(3.20%), others(4.26%), unknown(3.20%) and drung(1.6%) as group Ⅲ. There was an sequence in the whole classification of the causes of the fatty livers that was 35 subjects(32.7%) being alcohol and obesity, each other, 19 subjects(18.3%) being unknown cause, 9 subjects(8.7%) being diabetes, 6 subjects being others and 2 subjects(1.9%) being drug.

Conclusion : It was more important to treat the fatty liver properly with the causative correction of the offending agents than to confirm the fatty liver in the abdominal ultrasonography undoubtedly.