Diagnosis of autoimmune gastritis by high resolution magnification endoscopy.

Endoscopic visualisation of gastric atrophy is usually not feasible with conventional endoscopy. Magnifying endoscopy is helpful to analyze the subepithelial microvascular architecture as well as the mucosal surface microstructure without tissue biopsy. Using this technique we were able to describe the normal gastric microvasculature pattern and we also identified characteristic patterns in two cases of autoimmune atrophic gastritis.