Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Aug 14, 2015; 21(30): 9126-9133
Published online Aug 14, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i30.9126
Cardiac mucosa at the gastroesophageal junction: An Eastern perspective
Ahrong Kim, Won-Young Park, Nari Shin, Hyun Jung Lee, Young Keum Kim, So Jeong Lee, Cheong-Soo Hwang, Do Youn Park, Gwang Ha Kim, Bong Eun Lee, Hong-Jae Jo
Ahrong Kim, Won-Young Park, Nari Shin, Hyun Jung Lee, Young Keum Kim, So Jeong Lee, Cheong-Soo Hwang, Do Youn Park, Department of Pathology, BioMedical Research Institute, Pusan National University Hospital, Pusan National University School of Medicine, Busan 602-739, South Korea
Gwang Ha Kim, Bong Eun Lee, Department of Internal Medicine, BioMedical Research Institute, Pusan National University Hospital, Pusan National University School of Medicine, Busan 602-739, South Korea
Hong-Jae Jo, Department of Surgery, Pusan National University Hospital, Pusan National University School of Medicine, Busan 602-739, South Korea
Author contributions: Kim A and Park DY designed the research; Kim A, Park DY, Kim GH and Lee BE performed the research; Park WY, Shin N, Lee HJ, Kim YK, Lee SJ and Hwang CS contributed analytic tools; Kim A and Park DY analyzed the data and wrote the paper; Jo HJ and Kim A performed multivariate analysis and contributed to search the demographic information.
Supported by A grant from the National R and D Program for Cancer Control, Ministry for Health, Welfare, and Family affairs, South Korea, No. 0920050.
Institutional review board statement: The study was performed with waiver of confirmation by Pusan National University Hospital.
Informed consent statement: The study was performed with waiver of informed consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: 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: Do Youn Park, MD, PhD, Department of Pathology, BioMedical Research Institute, Pusan National University Hospital, Pusan National University School of Medicine, 1-10 Ami-Dong, Seo-Gu, Busan 602-739, South Korea. pdy220@pusan.ac.kr
Telephone: +82-51-2407717 Fax: +82-52-2560788
Received: January 15, 2015
Peer-review started: January 16, 2015
First decision: March 10, 2015
Revised: April 6, 2015
Accepted: May 27, 2015
Article in press: May 27, 2015
Published online: August 14, 2015
Processing time: 213 Days and 18 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Incidence of gastroesophageal reflux disease and gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) adenocarcinomas is increasing in Asia, though with a lower prevalence than Western countries. The existence and origin of cardiac mucosa (CM) at the GEJ is debated, but most data were from a Western population. This study shows that CM at the GEJ is a common histologic finding in a chiefly Korean population, and 4.4% showed direct continuity of oxyntic mucosa and squamous epithelium even in single biopsy specimens. CM was associated with gastroesophageal reflux disease and carditis severity, suggesting CM may be an acquired structure and is associated with reflux stimuli, similar to results from Western populations.