Occurrence of gastric mucosal erosions in association with other upper gastrointestinal diseases, especially peptic ulcer disease, as revealed by elective gastroscopy.

In an elective gastroscopic series of 3837 patients, gastric mucosal erosions were observed in 404 (10.5%) patients, 215 (5.6%) having only erosions without other endoscopic findings in the upper gastrointestinal tract. The male to female ratio was 1.3:1. The number of patients with erosions was highest in the age groups 41-60 years. The patients with erosions were younger than those with peptic ulcer studied during same period. The erosions were located in the distal part of stomach only in 86% of patients. Erosions were observed in 3.5% of patients with stomach resected for peptic ulcer. The positive association with active duodenal ulcer was significant, but there was a negative correlation to gastric cancer, with an almost significant difference compared with patients without gastric erosions randomly selected from the same elective gastroscopic series. The seasonal variation of occurrence resembled more that of gastric than duodenal ulcer.