The Detection of Premalignant and Malignant Gastric Lesions by Conventional Endoscopy in a General Population Sample

Background and Aims: The identification of patients with premalignant lesions and endoscopic surveillance could improve the early detection of gastric cancer, with better therapy and prognosis. We performed conventional endoscopy with biopsies to identify the incidence rates of premalignant and malignant gastric lesions and the risk of patients for this pathology.
Methods: A total of 1651 patients were investigated with conventional endoscopy. We took biopsies from 1493 patients. Biopsy specimens were analyzed for gastric inflammation, atrophy, intestinal metaplasia, dysplasia and neoplasia.
Results: We demonstrated that major symptoms had a sensitivity of 95.2%, and a specificity of 54.5% for the detection of gastric neoplasia, with a sensitivity of 61.6% and a specificity of 57.2% for the detection of premalignant lesions. We showed the risk of patients over 45 years, with major or minor symptoms, for premalignant and malignant gastric lesions (p < 0.001; RR = 3.34; 95%CI: 2.41–4.61). We emphasized the importance of histological evaluation by biopsies of entire gastric mucosa in case of polyps, ulcers, gastric atrophy detection or remnant stomach, for the evaluation of premalignant lesions (p < 0.,05). We showed that the prevalence of premalignant lesions increased with age and the presence of Hp infection. We demonstrated the risk of the inflammation in the gastric body for premalignant lesions.
Conclusions: The patient’s symptoms were not predictive of endoscopic and histologic findings. Not only symptoms, but also the age, the presence of Helicobacter pylori infection, the histological detection of the extent and location of gastric inflammation and premalignant lesions define the risk for the dyspeptic patients.