Is It Worthwhile to Fully Evaluate the Stomach in Every Ultrasound Examination of the Abdominal Cavity?

Background/objective: to evaluate the usefulness of abdominal sonography in the fastingstate with no hypotonic agents in the detection and exclusion of gastric lesions.patients and methods: one-hundred patients with normal upper gastrointestinal endoscopy,94 patients with a major gastric abnormality (including 59 intraluminal tumors, three submucosalmasses, 29 ulcers, two polyps and one hypertrophied gastric mucosa) and 75 patients with minorgastric abnormalities (mainly gastritis) were enrolled into the study.results: of the 100 normal patients, ultrasound showed four false positive results with 96%specificity of the examination. within the major gastric lesion group, ultrasound was true positivein 55 of 59 tumors, 15 of 29 ulcers, three of three submucosal masses and the case of giant gastricmucosa. it was negative in the detection of gastric polyps. it could detect only 8% of minor gastricabnormalities.conclusion: abdominal sonography in the fasting state, if carefully performed, is sufficientlyaccurate in detection and exclusion of major gastric lesions. therefore, although it cannot replaceendoscopic and barium studies of the stomach, careful evaluation of the stomach is recommendedin every sonographic evaluation of the abdominal cavity.