Gastric dysplasia and adenomas: how it all MAPS out!

Gastric polyps can be truly neoplastic but most polypoid dysplastic lesions are manifestations of gastritis-associated dysplasia that happens to form a polypoid lesion rather than true adenomas arising in normal background mucosa as is typically observed in the colon. However, the term adenoma has been used over the years to describe polyps with intestinal and pyloric gland differentiation, and this terminology is entrenched in our lexicon. In this review, we briefly discuss the issue of terminology, gastritis, and the following polyp types: intestinal type adenoma, pyloric gland adenoma, foveolar adenoma, and oxyntic gland adenoma (also termed oxyntic gland neoplasm and adenocarcinoma of fundic gland type.