Gastroscopy is the “gold standard” for the diagnosis of gastric diseases. With the accelerated pace of modern life and the increasing pressure of life, more and more people are suffering from stomach discomfort. Sometimes you may think that you can bear it and pass, or go to the nearby pharmacy to buy some conventional stomach medicine and take it by yourself, and then stop caring about your stomach after the symptoms are relieved. In fact, this approach is very unscientific and may drag from the beginning of superficial gastritis to chronic atrophic gastritis. So how do you scientifically check for a clear diagnosis of gastric disease? Gastroscopy to biopsy It is worth noting that, in general, in large hospitals, more than 90% of patients who undergo gastroscopy will have a biopsy for the sake of clear diagnosis and patient responsibility, because only with a biopsy can we subdivide and accurately diagnose whether it is superficial or atrophic gastritis, and whether there are pre-cancerous lesions in the stomach or even gastric cancer. The biopsy is the most important tool to determine whether the ulcer is a common ulcer or a cancerous ulcer. Therefore, some people say that “no biopsy is the same as no biopsy” for gastroscopy. So before you have a gastroscopy, do your homework and find out if your hospital routinely performs biopsies on the vast majority of patients. Is a painless gastroscopy really painless? Gastroscopy is still a little painful for most people, so what is a painless gastroscopy all about? In fact, gastroscopy itself brings a little pain, painless gastroscopy and ordinary gastroscopy is exactly the same, except that painless gastroscopy is given to the patient on general anesthesia, numb down of course will not feel the pain. If you have a fear of gastroscopy, you may also consider choosing painless gastroscopy. How often should a gastroscopy be repeated? For superficial gastritis, do it once a year after it is cured. Ulcer disease should be reviewed after it is cured to determine if the ulcer has really healed. Patients with atrophic gastritis with intestinalization or heterogeneous hyperplasia should be followed up regularly, and atrophy with mild intestinalization or heterogeneous hyperplasia can also be examined once every 1 year or so. Patients with moderate atrophy or moderate enterosis should be examined every 6 months or so. Patients with severe atrophy with severe enterosis or heterogeneous hyperplasia should be examined every 3 months, and if necessary, surgical treatment or endoscopic local treatment should be performed. In addition to general gastroscopy, there is also a kind of “ultrasonic gastroscopy”, which is a diagnostic technique in which an ultrasonic probe is sent through the gastroscope to examine the local area. It is mainly used when a bulge is found in the stomach during a general gastroscopy, but the nature of the bulge cannot be determined. Is gastric ultrasound reliable? ”Gastric ultrasound” is a diagnostic technique that uses an ordinary ultrasound machine to perform an ultrasound probe when the stomach is filled with water. This technique is not currently recognized and is generally used by individual clinics and others to make a superficial morphological assessment of the stomach, which basically has no diagnostic value. The most commonly used tests for gastric disease are the barium gastrointestinal meal and gastroscopy. The barium meal is a test in which the patient is given an oral contrast agent, barium sulfate, and the image left by the barium in the gastrointestinal tract is used to determine the internal lesions of the stomach and duodenum during X-ray fluoroscopy and radiographs. However, because the barium meal test is a very gross test and does not biopsy tissue, fewer and fewer patients are currently undergoing this test. This procedure is more often used in the diagnosis of gastric prolapse and abnormal gastric dynamics. Gastroscopy is a procedure in which a fiberoptic catheter with a lens is inserted directly into the stomach and duodenum to view the inside of the stomach and intestines with the naked eye. Through the endoscope we can directly observe the lesions and take biopsies through the endoscope, and also treat the corresponding diseases under the endoscope. In particular, endoscopy plays a pivotal role in the diagnosis of gastric diseases. In the case of gastric lesions, there are changes in the morphology, arrangement and color of the gastric mucosa. If appropriate, a small amount of tissue is taken for pathological analysis, which allows for a more definitive diagnosis.