Abstract:

Objectives: In Southeastern cities of Turkey, high prevalence of Helicobacter pylori infection and gastric cancer are seen. The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of the precancerous gastrointestinal lesions in patients with dyspeptic symptoms who underwent upper gastrointestinal endoscopy in the State Hospital. Materials and methods: We analyzed gastric biopsies taken from corpus and antrum of 234 consecutive patients who underwent upper gastrointestinal endoscopy between January 2009 and May 2009. According to Sydney system, chronic gastritis, gastric atrophy, intestinal metaplasia and dysplasia were diagnosed by histological examination. Results: The average age of patients was 46±15 (16- 82) years. Helicobacter pylori infection was seen in 66. 7% of the patients. Normal mucosa, chronic gastritis, gastric atrophy, intestinal metaplasia and dysplasia were diagnosed in 2.7%, 78.6%, 3.4%, 11.5% and 3.8% of gastric biopsy specimens, respectively. Helicobacter pylori infected patients showed a significantly higher prevalence of intestinal metaplasia compared to that of the non-infected subjects (9.8% vs. 1.7% p=0.021). Although the prevalence of gastric atrophy and dysplasia were higher among He­licobacter pylori infected patients, the difference was not reached to a statistically significant level (3.0% vs 0.4% p=0.19 and 3.0% vs 0.8% p=0.37 respectively). Conclusion: Our findings suggested that the prevalence of gastric precancerous lesions such as gastric atrophy, intestinal metaplasia, dysplasia and Helicobacter pylori infection were high in dyspeptic patients. This may be re­lated to actual high incidence of gastric cancer in the south-eastern region of Turkey.

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