Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 28, 2015; 21(24): 7495-7499
Published online Jun 28, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i24.7495
Low yield of routine duodenal biopsies for evaluation of abdominal pain
Sterling M Dubin, Wilson T Kwong, Denise Kalmaz, Thomas J Savides
Sterling M Dubin, Wilson T Kwong, Denise Kalmaz, Thomas J Savides, Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0956, United States
Author contributions: Dubin SM, Kwong WT, Kalmaz D and Savides TJ performed data acquisition, data analysis, and manuscript preparation; Kwong WT performed data acquisition, data analysis, manuscript revision; Kalmaz D performed manuscript revision; and Savides TJ created the study concept and manuscript revision.
Ethics approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the University of California San Diego Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent: This was a retrospective review of medical records. A waiver for consent was obtained via Institutional Review Board approval.
Conflict-of-interest: There are no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at sterling.dubin@gmail.com. Consent was not obtained but the presented data are anonymized and risk of identification is low. No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Sterling M Dubin, MD, Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0956, United States. sterling.dubin@gmail.com
Telephone: +11-619-5436287 Fax: +11-619-5436529
Received: January 21, 2015
Peer-review started: January 22, 2015
First decision: February 10, 2015
Revised: February 23, 2015
Accepted: April 16, 2015
Article in press: April 17, 2015
Published online: June 28, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: Duodenal biopsy is commonly performed, yet the diagnostic yield of routine duodenal biopsy of normal appearing duodenal mucosa for the evaluation of abdominal pain is unclear. This retrospective chart review of 300 consecutive patients with duodenal biopsy of normal appearing mucosa performed for evaluation of abdominal pain found a diagnostic yield of 1.3%. There were 3 new diagnoses of celiac disease and one of giardiasis. Routine biopsy of normal appearing duodenal mucosa during esophagogastroduodenoscopy should be reserved for patients with a high pretest probability of duodenal pathology given a low diagnostic yield.