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The study describes the patient population in private physiotherapy practice in a Norwegian urban community. All private practicing physiotherapists (n=87) in the area were sent a questionnaire and asked to fill in information about their patients per ultimo March 1998. Completed questionnaires were returned by 78 therapists (90 percent) and provided patient description of 3.196 patients. The patients’ sex and age, and the physiotherapist’s primary diagnosis and treatment goal was recorded by the therapist. Two-thirds of the patients had various musculoskeletal disorders. The single most frequent diagnoses were neck and head problems (21.5 percent) and low back and pelvic problems (17.8 percent), 70 percent of the patients were women and 3/4 of the patients were between 24-66 yrs. Statistics revealed that neck/head pain and low back/pelvic pain were the most frequent diagnoses (39.3 percent). Problems related to lack of standardization in terms of diagnoses and age group categorizations, both in this and related studies, are discussed.