Frequência da Eosinofilia Esofágica em Pacientes Pediátricos Submetidos à Endoscopia Digestiva Alta em um Serviço Terciário.

Abstract

Esophageal eosinophilia is a chronic inflammatory condition, present in both children and adults. Patients with symptoms of gastroesophageal diseases such as eosinophilic esophagitis, eosinophilic esophagitis responsive to proton pump inhibitors and gastroesophageal reflux disease are commonly diagnosed with esophageal eosinophilia. However, in Brazil, there is a lack of information on the frequency of this condition. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the frequency of esophageal eosinophilia in pediatric patients (0- 15 years) with symptoms of gastroesophageal diseases, in a tertiary care service in the central region of Brazil. The medical report of 2,425 patients that underwent gastroesophageal endoscopy with biopsy were analyzed. Esophageal eosinophilia was diagnosed in patients with ≥15 eosinophils per high powered field (400x). Subsequently, the frequency of esophageal eosinophilia was calculated, and compared with the variables sex, age and the endoscopic diagnostic. Finally, the frequency of esophageal eosinophilia was correlated with the fluctuations of monthly temperature over the diagnosis year. The frequency of esophageal eosinophilia was estimated at 5.2% (126 patients from 2,425 had ≥15 eosinophils per high powered field in esophageal biopsy). Furthermore, there was a significant difference between the male and female patients, where the percentage of male patients with esophageal eosinophilia was 2.5 times higher than the percentage of female patients (71.4 and 28.6% respectively). There was also a significant difference between the endoscopic diagnostics of patients with esophageal eosinophilia, where 73% had erosive esophagitis, 21.4% had nonerosive esophagitis and only 5.6% of the patients had a normal esophagus diagnostic. From these patients, the male patients had a higher percentage of erosive and non-erosive esophagitis than the female patients, while there was no sex difference for patients with a normal esophagus. The classification and regression tree (CART) analysis determined the endoscopic diagnostic as the most important independent variable (100%), followed by the sex (65%) and age (27.3%) of the patients with esophageal eosinophilia. Moreover, the CART analysis showed an interaction between all the independent variables. The majority of patients diagnosed with esophageal eosinophilia were older (7-15 years of age) males patients with erosive esophagitis, while the younger (0-6 years of age) female patients with non-erosive esophagitis or normal esophagus showed the lowest percentage of diagnosed cases. Furthermore, there was a moderate inverse relationship between the number of esophageal eosinophilia cases and the average monthly temperature in 2012 (Person s correlation R2 = - 0.6), with a slight increase of esophageal eosinophilia in the colder months of the year. In conclusion, this study shows, for the first time, that esophageal eosinophilia is relatively frequent in pediatric patients with symptoms of gastroesophageal diseases in the central region of Brazil. This study also confirms that for a reliable diagnosis of esophageal eosinophilia is necessary to consider the clinical signs and the histological analysis of esophageal biopsies.