The features of gastric epithelial reactive hyperplastic lesions under magnifying endoscopy combined with narrow-band imaging.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Gastric reactive hyperplasia (RH) is a common benign lesion of the gastric mucosa that can be resolved by conservative treatment without endoscopic intervention. Some RH lesions are indistinguishable from low-grade intraepithelial neoplasia (LGIN) lesions of gastric mucosa under endoscopy. The aim of this study was to investigate the morphological features of RH lesions under magnifying endoscopy combined with narrow-band imaging (ME-NBI).

METHODS: A retrospective study of 653 patients with superficial suspicious lesions of gastric mucosa was performed. According to the pathological results of biopsies, the final included lesions were divided into the RH group ( n  = 88) and LGIN group ( n  = 138). We analysed the microvascular and microsurface patterns of these lesions under ME-NBI, extracted the most significant combination of endoscopic features of RH lesions, and evaluated their diagnostic performance.

RESULTS: ME-NBI characteristics that could distinguish RH lesions from LGIN lesions after univariate analysis were included in multivariate logistic regression. The results showed that ten characteristics, including intervening part (IP) length homogeneity, type III gastric pit pattern and homogeneity of marginal crypt epithelium (MCE), were statistically significant. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that the triad of these features was the best combination for diagnosing RH lesions with an AUC of 0.886 (95% confidence interval; 0.842-0.929), the sensitivity of 85.5% and specificity of 79.5%.

CONCLUSIONS: The triad of IP length homogeneity, type III pit pattern and MCE homogeneity under ME-NBI helps endoscopists to identify gastric RH lesions, thereby avoiding unnecessary biopsy and repeat endoscopy due to misjudgment of neoplastic lesions.