Basavaraj Ningappa Basur1, Balachandra Parasuram Sanganal2, Aswathy Chandran3
BACKGROUND
Acute Gastrointestinal (GI) haemorrhage is a common clinical problem with diverse manifestations. Patients may present with both haematemesis and melaena, an ageing patient population with an increased prevalence of associated medical comorbidities has kept the mortality figures largely unchanged for the past thirty years, despite technological advances in endoscopy and other minimally-invasive procedures, the hospital mortality rate has remained at about 10% in the past 30 years.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Proposed to study the clinical characters, accuracy of endoscopy in diagnosis and efficacy of endoscopic treatment in patients presenting with upper GI bleeding to Surgery Department in KIMS, Hubli, during the period of 2014-2016. The study was a prospective descriptive study among patients who presented with acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding.
RESULTS
The male-to-female ratio was 3.9:1. Oesophageal varices were the leading cause of upper GI bleeding in both sexes. Other causes, duodenal ulcers, gastric ulcers and gastric cancer were commonly seen in males, whereas gastric erosions were seen equally in both sexes. Alcoholic liver disease is commonest cause of portal hypertension in upper GI bleeding followed by extrahepatic portal hypertension and noncirrhotic portal hypertension.
CONCLUSION
Upper GI endoscopy serves as the mainstay in the diagnosis of upper gastrointestinal bleeding and its therapeutic applications are effective in all cases. It is therefore recommended that early endoscopy should be performed preferably within 24 hours of the onset of bleeding.
