Gastritis
(Healthy Health)
 |
| Etiptopmark.blogspot.com |
Signs and symptoms of acute gastritis.
How it's diagnosed and how it's treated acute gastritis is an inflammation of the gastric or stomach mucosa.
So, it's in the word gastritis gastra that prefix refers to the stomach and it means inflammation.
So, inflammation of the gastric mucosa acute gastritis may affect part of the stomach or the entire stomach.
If it, affects the entire stomach it's known as pan gastritis. Now acute gastritis is caused by a variety of factors.
So, with these factors with regards to why acute gastritis occurs destructive processes outweigh protective mechanisms in the gastric mucosa.
There are two types, I just want to brief, here I'm not going to explain about them in so much detail in this, but there is erosive and non-erosive acute gastritis.
The causes of acute gastritis - one of them is infections and these infections can be by bacteria like helicobacter pylori and this is actually the most common cause of acute gastritis.
So, you can imagine that there's irritation of the stomach lining from alcohol consumption - so this leads to inflammation of that stomach mucosa.
Smoking may also contribute to or cause acute gastritis bile acid reflux is another cause ischemia so we can see this in shock patients or ICU patients.
So, if there's issues with blood flow to the stomach we're essentially reducing the amount of blood getting to the stomach the nutrients get into the stomach reducing the protective mechanism of the stomach.
So, this can lead to acute gastritis food allergies and poisoning - can also lead to acute gastritis.
There's another form of acute gastritis known as autoimmune gastritis - so this is, where there are auto antibodies, that are formed that attack the stomach mucosa this is more common in young women.
Certain medications can also cause acute gastritis these include nsaids or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
You can think of ibuprofen or advil iron supplements can also cause this - certain injuries and illnesses - so any injuries or illnesses may lead to gastritis.
The stress or physiological stress that is associated with the injuries or illnesses especially if there are significant injuries or illnesses can also lead to gastritis as well and as for the acute gastritis that is caused by injuries and illnesses this causes what we call acute stress gastritis.
So, as we mentioned before, all of these causes lead to an imbalance in destructive processes and protective mechanisms where the destructive processes overcome or out-compete those protective mechanisms.
Now, that we know some of the causes let's talk about the clinical features what are some of the signs and symptoms of acute gastritis.
Now it's important to note that some patients with acute gastritis may be asymptomatic - so some patients with non-erosive gastritis may have no symptoms that can see this in some cases of h pylori gastritis.
In the acute setting h pylori gastritis may have no symptoms at all but when there are symptoms, we often see symptoms like dyspepsia which is a gnawing burning sensation in the epigastric area - so the epigastric area is the area in the middle of the stomach above the belly button or above the embolicus.
That is the epigastric area - so we can have dyspepsia or a sensation of indigestion - we can also have epigastric pain so we can have a more overt pain in that same area.
There can also be nausea and vomiting in acute gastritis reduced or loss of appetite and bloating and belching.
These are some of the more common signs and symptoms of acute gastritis and some other more uncommon symptoms that can occur in acute gastritis include fever and chills and hiccups - now there are certain complications of acute gastritis, that are important to note here, one of them is gastrointestinal bleeding.
We can imagine that if there is, inflammation or any damage to the lining of the stomach there may be some bleeding - so one of those is molina which is black tarry stool hematokesia which is bright red blood in your stool or hematemesis which is vomiting up of blood - so with regards to why each of these happens with molina - this is digested blood.
If, there is a very slow bleed from acute gastritis this can give the body time to digest that blood and produce a black tarry and smelly stool with regards to hematophysia - this is a bright red stool and this is more likely to occur if, there is a very quick rapid brisk bleed from the acute gastritis and then if there is so much bleeding there may be some vomiting up of blood and that is hematemesis.
Because of all this gastrointestinal bleeding we, may have issues with anemia or a low blood count and associated symptoms of anemia like fatigue acute gastritis can eventually lead to peptic ulcer disease a lot of the pathogenesis in acute gastritis is similar to peptic ulcer disease.
If, you have ever read my articles, on peptic ulcer disease you'll note a lot of similarities - here so if there is erosion of the gastric mucosa from this process that continues.
We can have ulcer formation and then in some cases we can also see nutrient deficiencies we see this, more commonly in autoimmune gastritis and some of these nutrient deficiencies include vitamin B12 and iron.
Now let's discuss about the diagnosis and treatment, so clinicians diagnose gastritis oftentimes by endoscopy with biopsy, so they put an endoscope down and they take biopsy samples - they can also assess for h pylori as you mentioned before h pylori associated gastritis is the most common form of gastritis.
They can do this by doing a urease breath test a stool sample checking for h pylori or through serology testing, serology testing is looking for antibodies that have been formed against h pylori but this doesn't necessarily mean that you have a current infection of h pylori, if you have antibodies it just means that you've been exposed to h pylori.
At some points so that is the problem with serology testing and then auto antibodies can be checked if there's concern of autoimmune gastritis.
Now, how do clinicians treat gastritis it's important to identify and avoid causes of acute gastritis these include alcohol use nsaid use and some other effects as well including infection with h pylori.
Therefore, good food handling hygiene is important in other methods to reduce the spread as well, it's also important to help reduce those destructive processes by way of either using antacids.
If it's very very mild case antacids may be used temporarily but in most cases we're going to see h2 blockers or proton pump inhibitors like pantopers - all being used this helps reduce the acidity in the stomach lowering the destructive processes allowing more of a balance between destructive processes and protective mechanisms and then in the case of h pylori, associated gastritis more specifically triple therapy in order to eradicate the h pylori is important this is done with the antibiotics clarithromycin and amoxicillin and then also using a proton pump inhibitor as well and then in the case of autoimmune gastritis - because of those nutrient deficiencies iron supplementation and B12 supplementation are also important as well.
If, you want to learn more about peptic ulcer disease please await for the topic and if you haven't already, please like and subscribe for more lessons like this artucke.
Thanks so much for watching and hoping to see you next time!
****
Word Count: 1,420
Characters : 8,248
Comments