Correlation of endoscopic and histological diagnosis in upper gastrointestinal lesions

A correlation between endoscopic and histological diagnosis was studied in 240 patients undergoing upper gastrointestinal endoscopy for dyspeptic symptoms. The biopsies from one or all the three sites were taken from oesophagus (158), stomach (193) and duodenum (146) according to the presenting symptoms of the patients. There was a better correlation between endoscopic and histological diagnosis when a positive finding was seen by the endoscopists as compared to when the endoscopy revealed no abnormality. One out of six benign looking ulcers in oesophagus and 1 out of 9 benign looking gastric ulcers turned out on endoscopy, to be malignant on subsequent histology. Inflammation of oesophagus, stomach and duodenum were the most commonly missed lesions on endoscopy.