Profile of Endoscopic Lesions and Prevalence of <i>H. pylori</i>Infection at the Digestive Endoscopy Unit of Panzi General Reference Hospital in Bukavu

Introduction: Thanks to the opening of the digestive endoscopy unit in the Reference General Hospital of Panzi in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which inspired our work on the profile of endoscopic lesions observed in a series of 1000 patients correlated with clinical and demographic criteria with the contribution of pathology examinations of the 292 biopsies performed. The aim of our work is to evaluate the prevalence of significant endoscopic lesions as well as that of H. pylori infection. Material and Methods: This is a retrospective, descriptive and analytical study, ranging from the 16th of December 2014 to the 16th of June 2016. It covered 1000 patients who benefited from a high digestive endoscopy and 292 of them had a biopsy with pathological examination. The data obtained were recorded and analyzed using the Epi-info software and chi-square test. Results: fifty-five percent of these patients were women. 66% of the patients were under 50 years of age. Their major symptom was epigastric pain (89.2%), the most observed endoscopic lesion was erythematous gastritis (82%) therefore we have noticed 21.5% of significant lesions. Gastric cancer was present in 3.9% of cases and gastric ulcer in 4.2% of cases. The gastric tumor was correlated with age and sex (P-value at 0.000 and 0.013). The gastroduodenal ulcer was linked to age, NSAID and tobacco use (P-value at 0.0007, 0.001, 0.007). Esophageal mycosis was correlated with HIV status (P-value at 0.000). Helicobacter pylori gastritis was the most frequent (61.30%) and Helicobacter pylori were present in 63% of gastric biopsies. Conclusion: Upper digestive endoscopy is a major tool for the diagnosis of upper gastrointestinal disorders and should always be followed by a biopsy if there is a suspicious lesion for pathologic confirmation and adequate management.