Patients with chronic renal failure are not at a risk of developing chronic peptic ulcers

This study reports the endoscopic and histological aspects of gastrointestinal mucosa in a consecutive series of 249 patients with chronic renal failure on conservative hemodialysis, who were awaiting renal transplantation. At endoscopy the mucosa was normal in 54.2% of the cases and revealed gross inflammatory changes in 34.1%. Duodenal ulcers were found in 11.2% of patients with only one gastric ulcer. Of the 28 duodenal ulcers, 16 were active and 12 inactive lesions. Gastric biopsies sampled from 44 non-ulcer patients showed signs of chronic gastritis in 29.6%, atrophic gastritis in 18.2, and reported normal in 52.3% of the cases. The above findings were not affected by the ages of patients or by the total duration of hemodialysis treatment. It is concluded that patients with chronic renal failure share the same risk of developing chronic peptic ulcers as the general population. Moreover, the overall endoscopic and histological appearance of the mucosa in these patients appears not to differ from data reported in the general population.