Abstract

Introduction: Upper Gastrointestinal (UGI) endoscopy has become part and parcel of investigation protocol in a patient with gastrointestinal diseases. With passage of time it has been transformed to a therapeutic modality too. The present study was conducted to look for the indications and patterns of UGI endoscopy of certain GI and liver disorders in study hospital.

Materials and Methods: Patients undergoing UGI endoscopies referred from other departments and hospitals as well as from OPDs were assessed in our endoscopy clinic. Total 2466 patients who were examined at our endoscopy room were recorded over a period of the year 2016. The records were manually retrieved with the help of a predesigned semi-structured proforma and later on transformed to suitable statistical software and subsequently analysed.

Results: Out of 2466 patients 59% were males and 41% were females. The commonest indication for doing UGI endoscopy was dyspepsia followed by evaluation for chronic liver disease (CLD) and UGI bleed. Other indications were corrosive injury and evaluation in patients with chance detection of Hepatitis B and C markers. Majority of dyspepsia patients were found to be normal on endoscopy. In dyspepsia patients a significant findings was esophago gastric malignancies. In CLD patients, commonest findings were esophageal varices in various stages. Patients presented with UGI bleed were noted to have esophageal varices in 18% of patients. Other causes of UGI bleed in this study were peptic ulcer disease, esophagogastric erosions and duodenal and gastric ulcers.About8% patients of UGI bleed had underlying esophageal and gastric growth. A good majority of patients did not   have any mucosal changes. Corrosive ingestion had produced spectrum of esophageal and gastric erosions as well as ulcers.

Discussion & Conclusions: Patients attended for endoscopic evaluation were almost equal in sex distribution. Dyspepsia was the single most important indication for endoscopic examination and majority of them were found to be normal endoscopically. This implies that functional dyspepsia is probably the commonest etiology for dyspeptic patients. Among CLD patients portal hypertension (PHT) was evident in most of the patients with varices and portal hypertensive gastropathy (PHG). Patients presented with UGI bleed had varix in one fifth of cases and peptic ulcers in less than 10% of patients. Thus UGI endoscopy is a very useful and informative procedure for diagnosis of GI and liver disorders.

Keywords: UGI endoscopy, indications, endoscopic patterns.