Can Chromoendoscopy Improve the Early Diagnosis of Gastric Carcinoma in Dogs?

Marcus Vinicius Candido; Pernilla Syrjä; Susanne Kilpinen; Søren Meisner; Mohsen Hanifeh; Thomas Spillmann

doi:10.3390/ani12172253

Can Chromoendoscopy Improve the Early Diagnosis of Gastric Carcinoma in Dogs?

Animals (Basel). 2022 Aug 31;12(17):2253. doi: 10.3390/ani12172253.

Authors

Marcus Vinicius Candido¹, Pernilla Syrjä², Susanne Kilpinen¹, Søren Meisner³, Mohsen Hanifeh¹, Thomas Spillmann¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Equine and Small Animal Medicine, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, P.O. Box 57, Helsinki University, 00014 Helsinki, Finland.
² Department of Veterinary Biosciences, Veterinary Pathology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, P.O. Box 66, Helsinki University, 00014 Helsinki, Finland.
³ Digestive Disease Center, Bispebjerg Hospital, University of Copenhagen, 2400 Copenhagen, Denmark.

Abstract

Chromoendoscopy has improved the early diagnosis of gastric cancer in humans but its usefulness in dogs is unknown. This study aimed at assessing whether adding narrow band imaging (NBI) or indigo carmine (IC) chromoendoscopy (CE) can improve the diagnostic yield of standard white light endoscopy (WLE). We compared the real-time findings of canine WLE, NBI-CE, and IC-CE and corresponding histology reports with endoscopic mucosal pattern assessment templates used in human medicine. Belgian Shepherd dogs are predisposed to gastric carcinoma. Therefore, 30 dogs of this breed served as the study population. According to histology, 17/30 dogs had mucosal changes (mucous metaplasia, glandular dysplasia, and gastric carcinoma). Diagnostic yield was best when targeted biopsies were taken with WLE and NBI-CE combined (15/17 cases). WLE alone positively identified only 8/17 cases and missed a gastric carcinoma in 3/6 cases. CE assessment templates based on macroscopic mucosal patterns, broadly used in human medicine, were not readily applicable in dogs. In conclusion, the study provides evidence that using CE in dogs has the potential to improve the diagnosis of precancerous gastric mucosal pathology and early gastric carcinoma. However, current image assessment templates from human medicine need major adjustments to the patterns of canine gastric mucosa.

Keywords: cancer; chromoendoscopy; dog; endoscopy; gastric carcinoma; glandular dysplasia; indigo carmine; mucous metaplasia; narrow band imaging.

Grants and funding

This research was supported by a grant for doctoral studies (201568/2015–2) by the Brazilian Research Council (CNPq). Additional funds for research material costs were granted by the Finnish Veterinary Research Foundation (ETTS) and the Finnish Foundation of Veterinary Research (SELS). None of the funding bodies were involved in the design, collection of samples, analyses, interpretation, or writing of the manuscript.