The clinical and endoscopic features of esophageal ectopic sebaceous glands

摘要

Esophageal ectopic sebaceous gland (EESG) is a rare disease with a lower rate of detection because of no clinical symptoms and benign endoscopic presentation. Owing to the rarity of EESG, the clinical features and endoscopic characteristics were only described in case reports. The aims of this study are to determine the detection rate of EESG in daily clinical practice and identify the clinical and endoscopic features of EESG in the general population in Taiwan. We enrolled 13 patients with EESG which were histologically confirmed via endoscopic biopsies through 108 875 conventional esophagogastroduodenoscopies performed in Taipei City Hospital Ren-Ai branch (TCH-RA) from January 2007 to June 2018. The data were collected retrospectively from the medical records. The detection rate of EESG in TCH-RA from 2007 to June 2018 was 0.0119%. The detection rate was elevated to 0.0205% in the last 2.5 years since this study was planned to start. Clinically, the majority of cases with EESG in TCH-RA were incidentally found during the endoscopic examination. Gastrointestinal symptoms lead these patients for endoscopy were caused by other diseases such as gastroesophageal reflux disease or peptic ulcers. The middle-aged population appeared to have a higher incidence of EESG without obvious gender difference in our study. The endoscopic findings of EESG showed multiple or single, whitish or yellowish, vary in size, patches, or plagues, most commonly situated in the middle third esophagus. The presentations of clinical and endoscopic findings of EESG in our study are identical to the results of the data from 52 cases with EESG in 25 published articles, except the gender trend. No noticeable gender difference was found in cases with EESG in TCH-RA but the male-major tendency of EESG was presented in the published group. The follow-up endoscopy found no malignancy change but fluctuations in the location and numbers. In conclusion, our cases with EESG in Taiwan own almost the same clinical and endoscopic characteristics as the previous literature, except gender tendency. Although no significant difference in clinical features of EESG in Taiwan, this study revealed the prevalence might be elevated by simply increasing the endoscopists' awareness of EESG.