Evan Dellon, MD: Increasing Biopsies for Esophagitis Diagnosis

More biopsies could result in more diagnoses of various diseases impacting the esophagus, including eosinophilic gastritis (EG) and eosinophilic duodenitis (EoD).

In data presented during the 2021 Digestive Disease Week (DDW) Virtual Meeting, a team led by Evan S. Dellon, MD, Director of the Center for Esophageal Diseases and Swallowing at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, found a high detection rate of the diseases following a minimum of 8 gastric and 4 duodenal biopsies.

In the study, 88 individuals who met the symptom criteria underwent upper endoscopy with a systemic gastric and duodenal biopsy protocol, followed by a histopathologic evaluation, which included the counting of eos to determine the diagnostic yield of EG and/or EoD (EG/EoD).

Among the subjects who met diagnostic criteria for EG/EoD, there was high variation in eosinophil concentration across biopsies, with a mean of 2.6 of 8 gastric biopsies and 2.2 of 4 duodenal biopsies collected per subject meeting the thresholds for EG/EoD diagnosis.

Each additional gastric and duodenal biopsy collected during endoscopy was associated with an incremental increase in the percent of EG/EoD cases captured.

In an interview with HCPLive®, Dellon explained how the study results could be implemented into real-life clinical practice in an effort to increase the diagnosis of diseases like EG and EoD.