Abstract

BEDOYA U, Álvaro et al. Prevalence and severity of gastric cancer precursor lesions in a high risk area. Rev Col Gastroenterol [online]. 2012, vol.27, n.4, pp.275-281. ISSN 0120-9957.

Atrophic chronic gastritis (ACG), intestinal metaplasia (IM) and mild dysplasia (MD)) are all precursor lesions which have been clearly demonstrated by many studies to be related to risks for development of gastric cancer (GC). This is especially true in our region which is considered to be a high risk area for this disease. We conducted a prospective study of 212 patients between the ages of 11 and 89 years who were from the yellow zone of Nariño. Patients were cared for in the Centro de Investigaciones de Enfermedades Digestivas (CIED - Center for the Investigation of Digestive Diseases) at the Centro Hospital la Rosa which is part of the public health care system of Pasto. Seven gastric mucosa biopsies were taken from each subject and stained with specially modified Giemsa stain to detect precursor lesions and the presence of Helicobacter pylori. The prevalence of ACG was 38.6%, the prevalence of IM was 24.4%, and the prevalence of MD was 1.5%. Prevalence of H. pylori infections among patients with ACG was 73.5% while among patients with IM it was 52%, but prevalence rose to 100% among patients with MD. When severity of precursor lesions on the OLGA-staging (Operative Link for Gastritis Assessment) scale was 11.5%, lesions were classified as stage III and IV. With one exception, all of these patients were H. pylori positive. We would like to ask the medical community to consider CIED's Follow-up and Monitoring Protocol for precursor lesions in order to demonstrate that the best strategy continues to be GC prevention in high risk regions.

Keywords : Precursor lesions; gastric cancer (GC); atrophic chronic gastritis (ACG); intestinal metaplasia (IM); mild dysplasia (MD).

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in English | Spanish     · English ( pdf ) | Spanish ( pdf )