Upper gastrointestinal tract endoscopic lesions in a rural African hospitalo: 252 endoscopies at the Kara University Hospital, Togo.

To analyze the indications for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy (UGIE) and determine the frequency of the pathological findings observed in rural areas of Africa. This retrospective study includes 9 series of 5-day visits to perform these examinations. Patients were informed of the presence of the endoscopy team by a bulletin on a rural radio station and by general practitioners at the Kara University Hospital. Patients were recruited from the hospital clinics and from the general population of the Kara region. The study includes all UGIE reports from August, 2007, through September, 2014; these contain the indications for the procedure, the patients' sex and age, and the examination report. The study included 252 reports for 133 women and 119 men with a mean age of 42.44 years (range: 20 to 102 years). The most frequent indications were dyspeptic syndrome (79.76%) and diffuse abdominal pain (11.11%). In all, we observed 139 gastroduodenal lesions among the patients with dyspepsia, principally bile reflux (23.02%), gastroduodenal inflammatory lesions (18.71%) and gastroduodenal ulcers (17.99%). The most commonly observed lesions for diffuse abdominal pain were again, bile reflux (30.77%), followed by gastritis, esophageal mycoses, and tumors. This work made it possible to identify the various pathological lesions of the UGI tract seen on endoscopies in a rural hospital in Togo.