[Dysplasia and early stomach cancer].

Biopsy and operative material was used to study the incidence and significance of different degrees of dysplasia in precancerous diseases and gastric cancer, its evolution and pathognomonic features, with various morphological methods. It is shown that mild and moderate dysplasia is indistinguishable from regenerative changes in gastritis, erosions and gastric ulcer, it can undergo involution or malignization. A marker of enhanced risk of gastric cancer is severe dysplasia which is often multicentric. Among pretumor diseases, most frequently severe dysplasia is found with adenoma and gastritis of the stump. Severe dysplasia in the absence of cancer in the gastrobiopsy material makes mandatory a dynamic study with biopsies taken every three months from different regions of the mucosa. The degree of dysplasia can be objectively tested by quantitating the DNA content, and its average content can be a criterion for differential diagnosis between severe dysplasia and early cancer. The histochemical, radioautographic, and electron microscopic features of dysplasia, testifying to impaired regeneration of te epithelium, cannot serve to differentiate between severe dysplasia and cancer or to assess the risk of transition of dysplasia into cancer. The main way of solving this problem is dynamic observation.