Coincidence of endoscopic and histological findings in the diagnosis of Barrett's esophagus: Coincidence of endoscopic and histological findings in the diagnosis of Barrett's esophagus

Summary

Introduction: Barrett's esophagus is a disorder in which the esophageal mucosa transforms from a squamous epithelium to a columnar epithelium with intestinal metaplasia. Endoscopically, this lesion corresponds to the presence of salmon-red columnar mucosa above the gastroesophageal junction. For its diagnosis, endoscopic suspicion and histological confirmation are required. Objective: to determine the levels of coincidence between the endoscopic diagnoses and the histopathological characteristics of Barrett's esophagus, based on the analysis of a series of cases. Methods: a retrospective study was carried out at the "Joaquín Albarrán" Clinical Surgical Hospital in Havana, Cuba between January 2017 and June 2019, obtaining data from biopsy records and clinical histories. Absolute and relative frequency calculations were performed and the Chi-square statistic was used to assess the strength of agreement between endoscopy and histology. Results: in the 67 cases with an endoscopic diagnosis, the coincidence with histopathology was 44.8%, in the remaining 55.2% of the patients the diagnosed lesions were chronic esophagitis (p = 0.005). Conclusions: Barrett's esophagus is one of the clinical entities with a highly variable epidemiology and its endoscopic diagnosis requires histological confirmation since there is a low coincidence between the endoscopic and histopathological diagnosis of BE, which is the gold standard for the diagnosis. EB diagnosis.