Categorized: Gastroenterology

Gastric Antral Vascular Ectasia: Relevance of the Histopathologic Diagnosis

Gastric Antral Vascular Ectasia (GAVE) is traditionally considered an endoscopic diagnosis.

Because the role of the gastric biopsy is uncertain, and the relatively obscure criteria proposed by Gilliam (Dig Dis Sci 1989; 34:885) are rarely used by practicing pathologists, gastroenterologists often rely on purely endoscopic impressions to diagnose GAVE.

Based on the observation that many patients with a clinical suspicion of GAVE have no supporting histopathologic findings and often other types of gastric pathologic lesions are detected, we suspected that the biopsy may have a greater role in the diagnosis of this entity than generally appreciated.

View the poster here.