Endoscopic diagnosis of gastric mucosal atrophy: multicenter prospective study.
OBJECTIVE
Gastric atrophy is one of the important pathological states that cause gastric cancer. As atrophic gastritis is related to the risk of gastric cancer, it is important to diagnose atrophic gastritis. In the present study, we tried to establish endoscopic criteria for atrophic gastritis.


METHODS
A multicenter study of prospectively collected patients was conducted in 24 participating facilities. Two hundred and seventy-five patients received endoscopic examination and 15 endoscopic features, including diffuse redness, swelling of areae gastrica, and mucosal swelling, were evaluated. Biopsy specimens were taken from five points recommended by the Updated Sydney System, and evaluated by a single pathologist for atrophy. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC/ROC) of each endoscopic finding to histological atrophy were calculated. Pepsinogen I/II ratios of these patients were measured and compared to the endoscopic features.


RESULTS
There was no single endoscopic feature that is highly specific for histological atrophy. In the corpus, the combination of visibility of vascular pattern and swelling of areae gastrica by indigocarmine chromoendoscopy showed the highest AUC/ROC (0.83). In the antrum, the combination of visibility of vascular pattern and mucosal swelling showed the highest AUC/ROC (0.70). These endoscopic findings correlated very well to the pepsinogen I/II ratio.


CONCLUSIONS
Combination of endoscopic findings can improve diagnostic accuracy, and endoscopic diagnosis of atrophy is improved especially with new endoscopic criteria, such as swelling of areae gastrica or mucosal swelling.
Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Sachiyo
S
Nomura
Kazunori
K
Ida
Shuichi
S
Terao
Kyoichi
K
Adachi
Takahiro
T
Kato
Hidenobu
H
Watanabe
Takuro
T
Shimbo
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000032:analysis; D001706:Biopsy; D005260:Female; D005753:Gastric Mucosa / Q000473:pathology*; D005757:Gastritis, Atrophic / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology; D005773:Gastroscopy / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020116:Pepsinogen A / Q000032:analysis; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
D015415:Biomarkers; D020116:Pepsinogen A
Helicobacter pylori; atrophic gastritis; endoscopic finding; pepsinogen; the Sydney System