Mortality and Need of Surgical Treatment in Acute Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding: A One Year Study in a Tertiary Center with a 24 Hours / Day-7 Days / Week Endoscopy Call. Has Anything Changed
A.M. Botianu, D. Matei, M. Tantau, M. AcalovschiOriginal article, no. 3, 2013
Background: Acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding, previously
often a surgical problem, is now the most common gastroenterological
emergency.
Aim: To evaluate the current situation in terms of mortality
and need of surgery.
Subjects and methods: Retrospective non-randomised clinical
study performed between 1st January-31st December 2011, at
"Professor Dr. Octavian Fodor†Regional Institute of Gastroenterology
and Hepatology in Cluj Napoca. 757 patients with
upper gastrointestinal bleeding were endoscopically examined
within 24 hours from presentation in the emergency unit. Data
were collected from admission charts and Hospital Manager programme. Statistical analysis was performed with GraphPad
2004, using the following tests: chi square, Spearman, Kruskall
–Wallis, Mann-Whitney, area under receiver operating curve.
Results: Non-variceal etiology was predominant, the main
cause was bleeding being peptic ulcer. In hospital global
mortality was of 10.43%, global rebleeding rate was 12.02%,
surgery was performed in 7.66% of patients. Urgent haemostatic
surgery was needed in 3.68% of patients with nonvariceal
bleeding. The need for surgery correlated with the postendoscopic
Rockall score (p=0.0425). In peptic ulcer, the need for
surgery was not influenced by time to endoscopy or type of
treatment (p=0.1452). Weekend (p=0.996) or night
(p=0.5414) admission were not correlated with a higher need
for surgery.
Conclusions: Over the last decade, the need for urgent
surgery in upper gastrointestinal bleeding has decreased by
half, but mortality has remained unchanged.