Review for 10.1186/s12876-020-01557-9 (2020)

Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Analysis of gastroscopy results among healthy people undergoing a
medical checkup: A retrospective study
Version: 
1 
Date: 
29 Jul 2020
Reviewer: 
Ian Beales
Reviewer's report:
The revised version of the paper is much improved. The written English is
clearer and the paper is much easier to comprehend. There is nothing particularly
novel in the paper but it does contain data on endoscopic findings in a large
cohort of apparently normal asymptomatic subjects. Thus, the data are somewhat
interesting from an epidemiological perspective. A few points still require further
clarification.
1. Although it is clear from the responses that what is actually being measured is
"endoscopic findings" and not "disease," the authors are still using disease freely
throughout the paper. This is confusing. I suggest that "disease" is not used at all
and either "endoscopic findings" or "pathological findings" used.
2. Presumably, the results concerning chronic and non-chronic gastritis refers to
pathological diagnoses?
3. The apparent high prevalence of gastritis is interesting but may well stem from
the rather wide definition used. The authors must include the definition of
gastritis used throughout the paper. 
4. Despite the high prevalence of gastritis is seems only a minority of subjects
had biopsies taken to look into this further. Is this the case? Why was biopsy
sampling so selective?
5. Please provide numerical data for the different grades of esophagitis.
6. The authors must acknowledge, and include in the possible weaknesses of the
study, the possible lack of quality control in the endoscopy and reporting.
Findings such a cervical inlet patches and esophageal glycogenic acanthosis are
reportedly very common in other populations but seem very rare her. This could
reflect the characteristics of this population or more likely lack of quality control
in the endoscopy and reporting.
7. Given that the authors have pathological data on a significant number of
subjects, it is surprising that they have not provided data concerning the
prevalence of atrophic gastritis and intestinal metaplasia. These are, of course,
clinically more important findings that just "gastritis" and given the current
uncertainties over the accuracy of the endoscopic diagnosis of these pre-
malignancy conditions, further data concerning this would be useful.
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