Major variants of esophagitis

The term esophagitis refers to any inflammatory condition that affects the esophageal mucosa or wall. There is a wide va-riety of causes leading to esophageal inflammation, including reflux disease, infections (e.g. herpes simplex or Candida al-bicans), drugs, exposure to physical or chemical agents (e.g. radiotherapy or corrosives), and systemic inflammatory/im-mune disorders (e.g. Crohn's disease, collagen vascular disea-se) (1). However, esophagitis of these various etiologies often presents with overlapping histologic features such as epithe-lial hyperplasia, intraepithelial edema, and inflammatory cell infiltration comprising neutrophils, lymphocytes and eosi-nophils within the squamous epithelium, all representing re-active changes to injury (2,3). Therefore, correlating the cli-nical, endoscopic and histologic findings is crucial in arriving at the correct diagnosis. In this review, the clinicopathologic features of the major types of esophagitis are summarized