Gastric mucosal erosions. An endoscopic, histological, and functional study.

Gastric erosions were detected in 404 patients in an elective gastroscopic series of 3837 patients. One hundred and seventeen patients with predominant erosion findings were examined in detail, and the results compared with those of age- and sex-matched controls. No difference was observed between patients and controls with regard to antral and body gastritis. The complete (type I) erosions were different from the other erosion types. They were more often located in the body mucosa (p less than 0.001), and foveolar hyperplasia (p less than 0.025) and hyperplastic polyps (p less than 0.01) and characteristics of A gastritis in the surrounding mucosa were common. The erosion patients had a higher acid secretion capacity than the corresponding controls (p less than 0.005), but with regard to the type of erosion, only the patients with incomplete (type IIb) erosions differed statistically significantly from the corresponding controls (p less than 0.005).