CD44 and chronic gastritis: Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the expression of CD44 protein and its polymorphisms in patients with chronic gastritis, precancerous gastric lesions, and gastric cancer; we evaluated our results with the risk of CD44 protein expression and clinicopathological characteristics of gastric cancer such as location of tumor, tumor size, histologic type, lymphatic invasion, vascular invasion, pathological T stage, pathological TNM stage, residual tumor, CEA, and 5-year survival.