The risk of gastric dysplasia in medical long-term treatment of peptic ulcer disease.

There have been recent findings of gastric cancer in patients treated with cimetidine but too soon after treatment for that drug to have had a pathogenetic role. Ranitidine has been shown to induce slight changes in the gastric mucosa. In 117 patients with gastric ulcer followed-up in some cases for 24 months, five cases of cancer were detected, one after more than a year of follow-up. The numbers were too small to allow any conclusion to be drawn regarding relationships with medication. No significant differences in incidence of gastric epithelial dysplasia between control patients and patients treated with cimetidine or ranitidine were found. No dysplastic lesions were seen during a brief follow-up of 19 duodenal ulcer patients and a few gastric ulcer patients treated with pirenzepine but the data is too limited to allow conclusions to be drawn.