Patients and methods
One hundred nine consecutive patients with chronic injury to the stomach after ingestion of a corrosive were treated in our institute from 1977 until 2006. Besides being a postgraduate teaching and research institute, JIPMER is a 1,000-bed superspecialty tertiary care referral center for four states. The medical records of the 109 patients were retrospectively analyzed and the results tabulated. Follow-up data were based on the follow-up clinical visits and were retrieved from the medical records. Based on the nature of the corrosive-induced chronic injury, we proposed a classification system to aid in surgical decision making.
Chronic corrosive gastric injury was classified into the following five types:
type I: short ring stricture of the stomach within one or two centimeters of the pylorus;
type II: stricture extending proximally up to the antrum;
type III: mid gastric stricture involving the body of the stomach and sparing the proximal and distal parts of the stomach;
type IV: diffuse gastric involvement producing a linitis plastica like appearance; and
type V: gastric stricture associated with a stricture of the first part of the duodenum.