Chronic atrophic gastritis: patient management
Patient management in chronic atrophic gastritis (CAG) in real clinical practice is a difficult task for a clinician. It is mainly due to the lack of reliable clinical stigmas that allow suspecting the presence of gastric mucosal atrophy. The diagnosis of chronic atrophic gastritis is valid only after a morphological assessment of gastrobiopaths taken during an endoscopy. According to a contemporary view, regardless of the inflammatory process etiology, CAG can progress to stomach cancer. At the same time, the point of no-return (at which the risk of inflammatory changes progression in the gastric mucosa and carcinogenesis preserves) is the CAG formation with the presence of intestinal metaplasia, even after the etiological factor is eliminated. Patients of this group, depending on the severity of inflammatory changes and atrophy, require constant dynamic follow-up and timely implementation of necessary measures for cancer prevention. To inhibit the progression of gastric mucosal precancerous changes, it is necessary to include the regimen using gastroprotective drugs for patients with CAG. Patients with autoimmune gastritis (in addition to the gastroprotective drugs) need to conduct regimens of cyanocobalamin therapy to prevent hematological and neurological disease manifestations.