Auntie Huang, 65 years old, has suffered from gastritis for more than 10 years. When she had stomach pain, she took some medicine to relieve the symptoms, but this time, her stomach pain was not good at all. Luckily, the surgery was done in time and she is in good condition now. In fact, it is not uncommon for Auntie Huang to have gastritis turned into gastric cancer, so how far is gastritis from gastric cancer? The main cause of gastritis is H. pylori infection. Half of the world’s population is infected with H. pylori, and 67% to 80% of gastric ulcers and 95% of duodenal ulcers are caused by H. pylori. Long-term gastritis is a risk factor for gastric cancer, and H. pylori can be detected in 60% of gastric cancer patients, and eradication of H. pylori can reduce the occurrence of gastric cancer in 37% of the population. Therefore, it is necessary to eradicate H. pylori in time, and the common method is triple therapy – clarithromycin + omeprazole + amoxicillin. Of course, besides H. pylori, there are many other risk factors that cause gastric cancer, such as dietary habits, environmental pollution, fear of psychology, etc. People who like hot, spicy and fried food for a long time are likely to cause damage to the gastric mucosa, and when the gastric mucosa cannot be repaired in time and is replaced by intestinal epithelial cells, it leads to “intestinal epithelial metaplasia”, which means that the cells that should be found in the intestine grow in the stomach, so the secretion function of the normal gastric mucosa becomes the absorption function of the intestine. Since the gastric mucosa cannot detoxify what it absorbs, carcinogenic substances are formed in the stomach over time, and therefore “intestinal epithelial metaplasia” is also called “precancerous lesion”. In recent years, there are more and more patients with “intestinal epithelial metaplasia” and there is a trend of youthfulness, which is related to irregular diet and stressful work, etc. Therefore, the development of gastric cancer is the result of a combination of factors. In fact, not all gastritis and intestinal epithelial hyperplasia will develop into gastric cancer, but as long as patients can pay attention to them and get timely treatment, gastritis and intestinal epithelial hyperplasia can be reversed. Even if they cannot be reversed, they can still spend their lives safely. Therefore, the distance between gastritis and gastric cancer depends on the degree of attention we pay to it, maybe there is still “one hundred thousand miles”, maybe it is just “one step away”!