OBJECTIVETo analyze the efficacy of endoscopic screening for gastric cancer in rural population in high risk areas of upper gastrointestinal cancer in Henan province.

METHODSSubjects aged 40-69 years in the high risk areas were selected to participate in the endoscopic screening based on the cluster sampling, and screening-positive subjects were sampled for pathological examination. The data of screening were summarized and the detection rates of severe chronic atrophic gastritis, severe intestinal metaplasia, low grade intraepithelial neoplasia, high grade intraepithelial neoplasia, early and middle-late cancer were calculated, and the constituent ratio of early cancer cases was calculated. The detection rates and early diagnosis rates for the first round screening and follow-up screening were compared.

RESULTSIn the 5 years, a total of 88 263 subjects were endoscopically examined in the first round screening and 4 004 subjects were diagnosed with low grade intraepithelial neoplasia or above (the detection rate was 4.54%), in which 3 256 cases were with low grade intraepithelial neoplasia (the detection rate of 3.69%), 366 cases with high grade intraepithelial neoplasia (the rate of 0.41%), 199 cases with early cancer (the rate of 0.22%) and 183 cases with middle-late cancer (the rate of 0.21%). The number of cases of high grade intraepithelial neoplasia and early cancer was 565 and the early diagnosis rate was 75.53%. 1 894 subjects with severe chronic atrophic gastritis, severe intestinal metaplasia and low grade intraepithelial were followed up with a compliance of 66.32%. A total of 45 cases of early cancer were diagnosed, with a detection rate of 2.38% and early diagnosis rate of 100%. The detection rate and early diagnosis rate in the follow-up screening were both statistically significantly higher than that in the first round screening (P<0.01 for both).

CONCLUSIONThe efficacy of endoscopic screening for gastric cancer is significant in high risk areas of upper gastrointestinal cancer, and improving the quality of follow-up screening will achieve a better performance of the screening.