[International classification of chronic gastritis: what should be taken and what is in doubt].

The authors review the used classifications of chronic gastritis: Modified Sydney system, Atrophy Club classification, and Operative Link for Gastritis Assessment (OLGA). Their concept apparatus: the grade and stage of gastritis, intestinal metaplasia as a marker of gastric mucosal athrophy is considered. The possibilities of interpreting the pathologist's report and clinicomorphological comparisons are discussed. The OLGA Classification, which is to predict the gastric cancer risk determined by the degree of mucosal atrophy (a stage of chronic gastritis), is noted to have an indubitable merit. A simplified classification, according to which the grade and stage of gastritis are determined by the modified visual analog scale for mucosal changes in the body of the stomach and its antral part, is proposed. Whether the postmortem study protocol for gastric biopsy specimens can be modified is discussed.