ENDOSCOPIC STUDY ON SUPERFICIAL GASTRITIS

Abstract

Superficial gastritis has been classified as a type of chronic gastritis, since a report of Schindler in GASTRITIS 1947. However, Benedict reported that superficial gastritis is only acute gastritis or shows normal mucosa histologically. In this investigation, we studied superficial gastritis endoscopically. The common endo-scopical features were patchy reddening, edema, adherent mucus, and/or comb-like redness (kammrotung). We especially studied the patchy reddening and comb-like redness (kammro-tung). Normal pits were observed on the redness of superficial gastritis by a magnifying endoscope, and this could be distiguished from erosion. We studied the relationship between the redness of superficial gastritis and the atrophic pattern by an endoscopic congo-red method. 88.40 of the superficial gastritis cases showed the closed type of atrophic pattern. The cases in which comblike redness (kammrotung) was observed in the antrum showed only C1 and C2, endoscopic atrophic patterns of Takemoto and Kimura. In 37 cases of superficial gastritis in which redness was observed, we performed second endoscopic examination after 1 month; and in 21.5% of the cases we could not observe any redness. It is concluded that superficial gastritis should be classified into two types; chronic type in which redness is always observed, and acute type in which the redness disappears after some interval of time.