Characteristics of Japanese patients with chronic gastritis and comparison with functional dyspepsia defined by ROME III criteria: based on the large-scale survey, FUTURE study.

OBJECTIVE To clarify the clinical characteristics of patients diagnosed with chronic gastritis in Japan, a large scale clinical survey of patients with chronic upper gastrointestinal symptoms was conducted. Patients diagnosed with functional dyspepsia (FD) according to the ROME III criteria were selected from among patients with chronic gastritis and the clinical characteristics of patients with FD and those with chronic gastritis were compared. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients with upper abdominal symptoms and diagnosed with chronic gastritis were enrolled in the study. Their main complaints, duration of symptoms, clinical characteristics, mental state, and results of endoscopic examinations, if available, were prospectively surveyed. Quality of life (QOL) impairment caused by abdominal symptoms was also surveyed using the Izumo QOL scale. RESULTS A total of 9,125 patients with a clinical diagnosis of chronic gastritis were enrolled in the survey. Of those, approximately 60% had more than 2 symptoms and QOL impairment was greater in cases with multiple symptoms. Endoscopic examinations were performed in 2,946 cases (32.3% of enrolled patients), during which gastric and/or esophageal carcinoma was found in only 0.2%, though organic diseases were found in 6.2%. Endoscopic examinations were not done for patients with high risks of organic diseases. Of patients with organic diseases excluded by an endoscopic examination, only 362 (12.3% of patients who underwent an endoscopy) were diagnosed with FD according to the ROME III criteria, mainly because of short symptom duration. There were no remarkable differences in regard to clinical characteristics, including symptoms and mental state, between patients with chronic gastritis and those with FD. CONCLUSION Clinical characteristics of patients with chronic gastritis were similar to those with FD, except for shorter symptom duration.