OBJECTIVE In the areas where intestinal metaplasia of the stomach is highly prevalent, diagnosing Barrett's esophagus solely by the presence of specialized columnar epithelium in the distal esophagus may lead to many false positive diagnoses. The aim of this study was to test validity of the specialized columnar epithelium as a diagnostic criterion of the short segment Barrett's esophagus in Ko...

The cardia bifida in amphibians has the bulboventricular loop of the two hemi-hearts convex towards the mid-line. In birds the two loops have been reported to be convex towards the outside because all the experimental methods of producing cardia bifida in birds, unlike amphibians, impede the closure of the foregut. The morphologic expression of each cardiac primordium was studied without alteri...

BACKGROUND Thousands of people in central Asia die every year from gastric cardia adenocarcinoma (GCA). GCA arises in the transformation zone between the esophagus and the stomach, similar to cervical and oropharyngeal carcinoma, which arise in areas with transformation zone characteristics. The analogous biology of the gastric cardia to the cervix and oropharynx, where human papillomavirus (HP...

The cardia bifida in amphibians has the bulboventricular loop of the two hemi-hearts convex towards the mid-line. In birds the two loops have been reported to be convex towards the outside because all the experimental methods of producing cardia bifida in birds, unlike amphibians, impede the closure of the foregut. The morphologic expression of each cardiac primordium was studied without alteri...

The identification of intestinal metaplasia (IM) in the esophagus is necessary for the selection of patients with Barrett esophagus (BE) for surveillance. We studied 108 esophageal biopsy and resection specimens, clinically diagnosed as BE, and stained them for CDX2, villin, HepPar-1, and cytokeratin (CK) 7 to investigate sensitivity for identifying IM. H&E-stained sections showed definite gobl...

BACKGROUND In order to provide a precise quantification of the association between alcohol drinking and esophageal and gastric cardia adenocarcinoma risk, we conducted a meta-analysis of available data. PATIENTS AND METHODS We identified 20 case-control and 4 cohort studies, including a total of 5500 cases. We derived meta-analytic estimates using random-effects models, taking into account co...

OBJECTIVE Gastrointestinal stromal tumors are the most common submucosal masses in the stomach and are mostly benign. Minimally invasive surgery is being increasingly used for their excision. Tumors close to the cardia often require a stapled resection of stomach. We report a technique for enucleating a 4-cm, well-circumscribed gastric submucosal tumor at the cardia, avoiding gastric transectio...

BACKGROUND Adenocarcinoma of the distal esophagus and gastric cardia are defined by the relationship of its epicenter to the gastro-esophageal junction, which is presently defined as the end of the tubular esophagus. We have recently suggested that the true gastro-esophageal junction is best defined by the proximal limit of gastric oxyntic mucosa. AIM To reclassify adenocarcinomas of this reg...

BACKGROUND/AIMS High-resolution manometry (HRM) with pressure topography is used to subtype achalasia cardia, which has therapeutic implications. The aim of this study was to compare the clinical characteristics, manometric variables and treatment outcomes among the achalasia subtypes based on the HRM findings. METHODS The patients who underwent HRM at the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology,...

The precursor metaplastic mucosal lesion that predisposes for esophageal adenocarcinoma is Barrett's esophagus. Because the signal transduction events that occur in Barrett's esophagus are poorly understood, this study aimed at generating a comprehensive description of cellular kinase activity in Barrett's esophagus, normal squamous esophagus, and gastric cardia to gain more insight into the pa...