Upper digestive tract bleeding of emergency at huhmp: clinic-endoscopic correlation

Abstract

Acute bleeding of upper digestive tract (ABUDT) is one of the most frequent emergencies at emergency services. Determining what patients have bleeding is an important challenge for clinicians since this it may be a risk for the patient´s life. Bleeding requires an interdisciplinary approach including medical, endoscopic and surgical management.  This study shows the relevance of carrying out upper digestive endoscopies of emergency, its endoscopic findings and the need of therapeutic management. Reports of 189 endoscopies diagnosed as having ABUDT were evaluated, from January 1 to June 30, 2010 at the digestive endoscopy unit of Hernando Moncaleano Perdomo University Hospital.  There were patients aged from 1 to 93, predominantly male (53%). Patients having no urgent bleeding cause was of 60,4%, urgent cause was of 39,6% from which 29.1% had non-variceal bleeding and 10.5% had variceal bleeding. Endoscopic therapeutics was not performed on patients having non-variceal bleeding; on the contrary, endoscopic therapeutics was performed on 90% of patients having variceal bleeding. Gastritis (26%) was the most frequent diagnosed cause of bleeding, following gastric ulcer (12%). Patients admitted to emergency service having ABUDT should be evaluated in an integral form using protocols to determine high-risk patients that require to have an upper emergency digestive endoscopy.