An audit of various endoscopic findings in patients presenting with non-specific abdominal pain

Introduction: One of the most common presentation of patients presenting to surgical OPD is heart burn or non specific abdominal pain. Over the years endoscopy has proven to benefit and aid in diagnosing the definitive causes of such clinical presentation. Among them those frequently encountered include GERD, biliary gastritis, reflux esophagitis and in some instances malignancy of upper GI tract can be diagnosed. Objectives: To retrospectively analyse the most common endoscopic finding in patients presenting with non specific abdominal symptom undergoing upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. Clinical data and findings of patients who have undergone upper gastrointestinal endoscopy in the past 3 years will be collected through departmental records. Results: A total of 1406 endoscopies were performed from the period comprising 2013-2015. A diverse range of etiologies were found 922 males comprised the study population while the female population included 484 patients with a male: female ratio of 1.9:1. Antral gastritis as an endoscopic finding was most common among the list of diagnosis and was seen in 275 patients of which the male population was 194 and female were 81. Endoscopy was normal in 643 patients belonging to the study population. The number of endoscopies performed in 2013 were 392 (28% of study population), 2014 -501 (36% of study population) and 2015-513 (36% of study population). Conclusion: The only clinical symptoms which patients present with are heart burn or abdominal pain of non-specific etiology. By performing an endoscopy the exact cause and the nature of condition can be deduced which aids the clinician in planning the appropriate treatment as demonstrated in this particular study.