Gastritis: a pattern-based approach

Evaluation of inflammatory gastric biopsies is one of the most common tasks pathologists face on a daily basis. Their analysis requires recognition of inflammatory patterns and their associated differential diagnoses, an especially vital skill in the not-so-uncommon instance when there is little clinical information available. In this review we summarize the most common gastric inflammatory patterns and their clinical associations, ranging from Helicobacter gastritis to autoimmune enteropathy to the biopsy with prominent Russell bodies. Our aim is to add to the readers' arsenal of tools to narrow the differential diagnosis in these ubiquitous specimens.