Preliminary report on gastric brush cytology as a screening procedure for gastric cancer

ABSTRACT

Carcinoma of the oesophagus and stomach in the United Arab Emirates are common diseases and most of the cases who present are late stages with very poor five-year survival rates 216 patients with symptoms referable to the upper GIT were visualised endoscopically; gastroscopic brush smears and biopsies were collected and results of 202 paired histologic and cytologic study were correlated. Cytologic examination increased the detectability of gastric dysplasia from 2% by biopsy alone to 4% by combined biopsy and cytology, and intestinal metaplasia from 5% to 8.4%. The overall cytologic accuracy for diagnosis of malignancy was 80%. Cytologic typing accuracy for malignant cases was 100%. The value of gastric cytology to increase detectability of premalignant changes is emphasized