Current status and issues on population-based endoscopic screening for gastric cancer in Osaka City

Abstract

The Osaka City Endoscopic Gastric Cancer Screening Conference was established in March 2016 to discuss issues on population-based endoscopic screening for gastric cancer. There is a consensus that cleaning and disinfection with a high-level disinfectant are essential, that patients undergoing antithrombotic treatments should be excluded from screening, and that sedatives should be prohibited in principle. There was agreement that endoscopic documentation should include approximately 40 images and that the review of images should be performed in the same facility. Regardless of the experience with screening or diagnostic endoscopy, doctors who performed more than 1,000 upper endoscopic examinations and were currently performing more than 100 endoscopic examinations annually were accepted as examiners or reviewers. Currently, we are focusing on training endoscopic examiners and double-check doctors. Screening endoscopists are encouraged to take images that are comprehensive and of a high quality, and the workshops being held at present focus on the presentation of false-negative cases. Future trainings will focus on the endoscopic diagnosis of Helicobacter pylori infection and the evaluation of atrophic gastritis, including education regarding the Kyoto classification of gastritis.