The significance of mucosal staining for the endoscopic diagnosis of chronic esophagitis as assessed in biopsy findings.

A total of 115 patients with clinical signs of esophagitis were examined by endoscopy and mucosal biopsy combined with Lugol solution. Overall, 175 mucosal areas (105 stained and 70 unstained) were subjected to histopathological examination. The correlation between the staining properties of the esophageal mucosa and the histopathological diagnosis resulted in a diagnostic sensitivity of 51.9%, a specificity of 70.2%, a positive predictive value of 60.0% and a negative predictive value of 62.9% for Lugol combined endoscopy. Lugol combined endoscopy did not appear to result in any improvement in the diagnosis or staging of reflux esophagitis in our study.