Upper endoscopy in elderly patients: a multicentre, cross-sectional study

Background: Both macroscopic and histological lesions are frequently detected at upper endoscopy in elderly patients. We assessed the prevalence of main endoscopic and histological alterations in elderly (> 65 years old) patients. Methods: In this study, clinical, endoscopic and histological features of patients referred for upper endoscopy in clinical practice were retrieved. Both univariate and multivariate analyses were executed. Comparisons with previous data were performed. Results: A total of 1336 underwent upper endoscopy in the 28 participating centres. At endoscopy, at least one macroscopic lesion was present in overall 420 (31.4%) patients. Erosive gastritis (13.3%) and erosive oesophagitis (9.8%) were the most prevalent lesions, whilst Barrett's oesophagus, gastric ulcer, duodenal ulcer and erosive duodenitis were observed in 1.8%, 2%, 1.4% and 3.1% patients, respectively. Nine (0.6%) cases of oesophageal, 25 (1.8%) gastric and 2 (0.1%) duodenal neoplasia were detected. At histology, Helicobacter pylori infection was diagnosed in 99 (15.9%) patients, and extensive precancerous lesions on gastric mucosa were detected in 80 (14.5%) patients. Endoscopic lesions were more frequent in males, at first endoscopy and in those with alarm symptoms and lower during PPI therapy. At multivariate analysis, PPI therapy significantly reduced the probability of finding endoscopic lesions (OR: 0.68, 95% CI: 0.46-0.99; P = 0.04), whilst neoplastic lesions were associated with presence of alarm symptoms (OR: 1.5, 95% CI: 1.1-2.1; P = 0.005). Conclusions: We found that the frequency of erosive and neoplastic lesions remained high in elderly patients, whilst the prevalence of both H. pylori infection and peptic ulcer was decreased.