Upper Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Outcomes in Patients with Gastrointestinal Symptoms: Retrospective Analysis at a Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Background: Endoscopic procedures are frequently performed to rule out any disease process which eventuates with either a positive or negative outcome. Association of patient demographics, clinical features with endoscopic outcomes are of paramount importance for better understanding and practice of endoscopy. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the frequency of positive endoscopic findings in patients with gastrointestinal symptoms compared to those with negative findings. As a secondary objective, the association between relevant demographics, symptoms, laboratory investigations and procedural outcomes of the participants and positive endoscopic findings were also assessed. Methods: A retrospective analysis of all the patients who underwent esophagogastroduodenoscopy from January 2017 to December 2017 was conducted. A total of 1066 endoscopy records were retrieved and using a convenience sampling technique, relevant data were manually entered to the questionnaires. Records with incomplete or inconsistent data were disregarded as per the exclusion criteria, resulting in 1011 patient records ultimately utilized for the study. All data were entered and analyzed using IBM SPSS 23.0. Results: The study comprised a total of 1011 patients where 52.2% were females and 47.8% males while the mean age of patients was 42.16 ± 15.45. Positive endoscopic findings were observed in 88.1%, where the most common finding was gastritis (49.1%). Approximately 14.5% had positive investigation findings for HBsAg and 23.1% were seropositive for anti-HCV antibody.

Epidemiology of premalignant and malignant upper gastrointestinal lesions among patients presenting from a rural community in Karachi, Pakistan

“…Pfau Civil Hospital, Karachi between January to December, 2017 reported that the mean age of patients undergoing the procedure of upper GI endoscopy was 42 years. 13 The current study found that among all the diagnostic endoscopies, more than one third of the endoscopies failed to identify any macroscopic pathology and were concluded as normal. The distribution of endoscopic examination findings which showed highest proportion of normal examination were among the patients of age 40 years or less (not shown in results).…”

“…This indicates that the study sample comprised a considerable proportion of young patients, a finding which is different when compared to average age of endoscopy reported from previously conducted studies mainly representing urban populations. 12,13 A study conducted by Farzana and colleagues at Department of Pathology, Liaquat University of Health Sciences, Jamshoro, reported that the average age of patients who went through endoscopy was 40 years. 12 Another study conducted with a sample of 1066 patients at Dr. Ruth K.M.…”

“…This finding highlights the crucial need of designing a locally tailored and more critical approach for high risk screening as per local malignancy detection rates by applying more rigorous stratification of risk factors in local context. 13,14 The identification and implementation of evidence based local endoscopy criteria can also help in improving the cost-utility and related efficiency of health system. 17 The role of advancing age and male gender in gastrointestinal epidemiology is well supported by a prospective study conducted in Northeast China as part of national cancer screening program.…”

Esophagogastroduodenoscopy in Patients With Dyspepsia: A Retrospective Study at a Tertiary Hospital

“…More than 11 million clinician consultations were accounted for by these symptoms each year [5,6]. Therapeutic trials, Helicobacter pylori testing, upper gastrointestinal radiography, and esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) are just a few diagnostic procedures that can assess dyspepsia [7][8][9]. Due in large part to the various evaluations of these models' accuracy, computerized decision analysis research has produced conflicting results about the best diagnostic and treatment approach [10][11][12].…”