Worldwidely, the incidence of the hepatitis A has been markedly decreased in the past years. Also in Korea, there has been only a few sporadic cases without evidence of epidemics since the mid 1980s. However, the incidence of the hepatitis A in young adults and chidden has been in trends of increasing since 1996. So, we retrospectively performed the study on the epidemiological changes and the clinical feature of hepatitis A in children, living in Kyung-gi province, since 1988 to 1998.

The four affiliated hospitals of the Catholic University of Korea, Our lady of Mercy's hospital, Holy family hospital, Eui-Jung-bu St. Mary's hospital, and St. Vincent hospital, were enrolled in this study. We conducted statistical analysis on the incidence of hepatitis A since 1988 to 1998, concerning with the period (monthly, annually), age, sex and related epidemiological property, by reviewing the hospital records of the patients with hepatitis 4. We simultaneously performed the study concerning with the clinical characteristics of hepatitis A.

1) During the study period, 46 children was diagnosed as hepatitis 4, and among them 28 children (60.1%) developed sporadically in the 1998. And sex ratio was 1.2(male):1 (female).

2) Most of the patients developed between March and July, and hepatitis A were mainly developed in the patients above the 10 year old ages(37 patients; 80.4%).

3) The socioeconomic and educational status of the patient's parents was almostly below the middle and low class. Although, we could not find the etiological factors in most cases, but we found the evidence of interfamilial transmission in one family.

4) The patients complained the symptoms of nausea and vomiting, jaundice, poor appetite, mild fever, fatigueless, abdominal pain, URI symptom, dyspepsia, dark urine, headache and diarrhea in order, and findings of jaundice, hepatomegaly, RUQ tenderness, splenomegaly and LLQ tenderness in order were seen.

5) All patients showed abnormal findings of the liver function tests, and the pattern of cholestatic hepatitis were seen in most cases, but these findings were normalized within the 2~4 weeks. The findings of the gall bladder wall thickening, hepatomegaly, splenomegaly and ascites were seen on abdominal sonogram.

6) The prognosis of all patients were good without complications, except in one case who had the episode of transient recurrence. And the mean hospitalization dates were 11.1 days.

We found that the incidence of hepatitis A showed the increasing trend, and peaked in the 1998 in Kyung-gi province children. And hepatitis A mainly developed in children above the 10 year old ages. The socioeconomic and educational status of patient's family was almostly below the middle class. All of them showed abnormal liver function, and clinically cholestatic hepatitis features were seen in most cases. But, the prognosis was excellent without complication in all cases.