Gastric dysplasias. A clinicopathological study of 35 cases.

Gastric epithelial dysplasia (GED) represents a recognized precursor lesion of gastric adenocarcinoma. GED types can be classified according to its morphology and patterns of mucin expression into adenomatous (intestinal), foveolar (gastric) and hybrid (mixed) types. We examined gastroscopic specimens with GED in 35 patients (21 men and 14 women, mean age 69.6 years). Adenomatous dysplasia was present in 17 patients (49 %), and was of low grade in 14 cases and high grade in 3 cases. Foveolar type dysplasia was found in 16 patients (46 %), and almost in one half of the cases it was high grade (in 7 cases, i.e. 46 %). In one woman, low grade foveolar dysplasia was found in polypoid mucosal prolapse of the gastric antrum. Hybrid dysplasia was found in only 2 cases (0.6 %), and in both of them this dysplasia was predominantly of foveolar type. One case was of low-grade and the second case was of a high-grade type. In our series GED was found mostly in the antrum. The findings in the adjacent mucosa usually included HP negative inactive chronic gastritis with intestinal metaplasia of both complete and incomplete types. In our series, foveolar type dysplasia was more frequent in comparison with previous studies. Our findings show that high grade dysplasia is more frequent in foveolar GD than in adenomatous GD, and this is in keeping with previous published findings.