Gastric polyps

Frequently encountered in pathology practice, gastric polyps are defined as luminal projections above the plane of the adjacent mucosa. These can be non-neoplastic, neoplastic or hamartomatous and syndromic. The classification of gastric polyps has important clinical implications and provides targeted clues towards discovering abnormalities in the remaining gastric mucosa or even elsewhere in the body in syndromic cases. The primary goal in the classification of gastric polyps is to exclude dysplasia and malignancy. Due to the tendency of some gastric polyps to arise in a background of inflammatory or atrophic gastritis or in association with polyposis syndromes, the second major diagnostic goal is to evaluate the surrounding flat mucosa. Numerous types of gastric polyps have been extensively described in the literature. The aim of this article is to review the most commonly encountered polyps in routine practice as well as a few special types of polyps and to describe their histologic features and their clinical implications.