Incomplete intestinal metaplasia as an indicator for early detection of gastric carcinoma in the events of helicobacter pylori positive chronic atrophic gastritis.

The aim of the study was to ascertain the existence of intestinal metaplasia in gastric mucosa of patients with gastric carcinoma coupled with H. pylori positive chronic atrophic gastritis and possible connection of IM with the development of gastric carcinoma. The paper presents prospective study that included 50 patients with gastric carcinoma and 50 patients with chronic atrophic H. pylori positive gastritis. All the patients were subjected to gastroscopy as well as biopsy targeted at antrum, lesser curvature and corpus and at the area 1-2 cm removed from tumor lesion. Biopsy samples were sliced by microtome and stained. We analyzed presence, frequency and severity of inflammatory-regenerative, metaplastic and dysplastic changes in the mucosa and evaluated their prognostic value. We typed IM immunohistochemically. This study confirmed responsibility of H. pylori for inflammatory events in gastric mucosa in patients with gastric carcinoma. According to our findings incomplete IM of types IIa and IIb as precancerous lesion is responsible for the development of gastric carcinoma and is associated with chronic atrophic gastritis grade I and II (92% of subjects, p=0.0097, h=1, p=0.01). Thus, the finding of incomplete intestinal metaplasia may be used as an indicator for early gastric carcinoma detection. Patients with patho-histologically verified incomplete intestinal metaplasia associated with active chronic atrophic gastritis of levels I and II represent risk group for the development of gastric carcinoma of intestinal type.