Clinical and histologic study of endoscopic duodenitis.

Duodenitis was investigated by endoscopy in 93 cases from among 1242 subjects. Endoscopic duodenitis was classified into three types endoscopically--reddening type, erosive type and nodular type. There was a relatively high correlation between the endoscopic and the histological diagnosis of duodenitis. Severely inflamed cases were found histologically more frequently in erosive- or nodular-type duodenitis than in reddening-type duodenitis. During the follow-up period, changes in endoscopic findings were observed more frequently, from the erosive type to the reddening type, and from the reddening type to normal. There were no cases which subsequently developed duodenal ulcers. We found a significantly high incidence of "endoscopic duodenitis" in uremic patients who had been given regular dialysis, and not in hepatic cirrhosis patients.