Frequency of upper gastrointestinal tract lesions as detected on endoscopic biopsies in patients presenting with iron deficiency anemia at a tertiary care hospital in Lahore

Aim: to determine the frequency of various lesions of upper gastrointestinal tract disorders detected in patients with iron deficiency anemia upon endoscopic biopsy. methods: this was a cross sectional study conducted in department of medicine of lahore general hospital from 25-11-2013 to 25-05-2014. all the patients with the diagnosis of iron deficiency anemia & having stool positive for occult blood were included in the study. patients with history of previous gastric surgery and patients who refused to participate were excluded. after taking an informed consent upper gi endoscopy of all selected patients was done by consultant gastroenterologist and the biopsies were sent to laboratory for histopathological study to make the appropriate diagnosis. in addition to collecting basic demographic details all these findings were recorded on a short structured proforma. the data were analyzed using spss v.16.0. qualitative data were presented in the form of %ages & graphs while mean±s.d were used for quantitative analyses. results: mean age of our patients was 29.8±6.7 years. there was an overall female predominance (71.61%). out of total 310 patients of iron deficiency anemia upper gi tract lesions were detected in 144(46.45%) while 166(53.55%) had no findings of the morbidity. with respect to frequency of various lesions of upper gastrointestinal tract 43(29.86%) had erosive gastritis,48(33.33%) had gastric ulcer,27(18.75%) had erosive duodenitis while 26(18.06%) had gastric malignancy as detected on endoscopic biopsy. conclusion: the frequency of upper git lesions/disorders found in our patients with iron deficiency anemia was 46.4%. the most common upper git lesion was gastric ulcer followed by erosive gastritis,erosive duodenitis and gastric malignancy.