Diagnosing oesophagitis in children : how discriminative is histology ?

Background and study aims : We set out to evaluate the discrimi- natory value of currently available histologic criteria in the differ- ential diagnosis of reflux oesophagitis and eosinophilic oesophagitis in children. Patients and Methods : We evaluated the oesophageal biopsies of 145 children and selected 28 demonstrative cases of clinically con- firmed eosinophilic oesophagitis (n = 7), and reflux oesophagitis (n = 11) with a control group with normal histology (n = 10). Histo- logical assessment was performed for the presence of papillary elongation, dilatation of intercellular spaces, basal cell hyperplasia and the number of intraepithelial eosinophils, lymphocytes and neutrophils.