Clinical comparisons between two subsets of gastric antral vascular ectasia.
BACKGROUND
The lesions of gastric antral vascular ectasia take two endoscopic forms, diffuse red spots and red stripes. In addition, they are often associated with cirrhosis. The main aim of the present retrospective study was to determine whether differences in endoscopic appearance and presence or absence of cirrhosis have relationships to clinical features and course.


METHODS
Gastric antral vascular ectasia in 30 patients was classified into 2 endoscopic subtypes, punctate type (21 patients) and striped type (8 patients); only 1 patient could not be categorized to either type. The 30 patients were divided into groups based on the presence (25) or absence (5) of cirrhosis.


RESULTS
All patients with punctate-type vascular ectasias had cirrhosis, whereas only 38% of patients with the striped type had cirrhosis. All patients without cirrhosis had the striped pattern. For patients with the 2 endoscopic types as well as those with and without cirrhosis, the outcomes of endoscopic treatment were similar.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings of the present study suggest that cirrhosis is strongly associated with the development of punctate-type vascular ectasias. The endoscopic appearance of vascular ectasias and the presence or absence of cirrhosis did not determine outcome of patients.
Ito
M
M
Third Department of Internal Medicine, Kagawa Medical University, Kagawa, Japan.
Uchida
Y
Y
Kamano
S
S
Kawabata
H
H
Nishioka
M
M
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015897:Comorbidity; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D020252:Gastric Antral Vascular Ectasia / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000473:pathology* / Q000628:therapy; D005773:Gastroscopy / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011336:Probability; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D016896:Treatment Outcome