What is already known on this topic
• Gastric cancer is preceded by a series of precancerous lesions, but the risk of gastric cancer in patients with such lesions is not well quantified
• Only one study provided follow-up data from a nationwide biopsy cohort, albeit with imputed censoring information
• In that study the excess incidence of gastric cancer among all patients with premalignant gastric lesions, especially in the first few years of follow-up, was considerable