Endoscopy for the diagnosis of acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding.

Diagnostic gastroscopy was performed on 337 patients for acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding, with 88% (296 of 337) diagnostic accuracy. Peptic ulcer disease was the cause of bleeding in 43% of the cases, erosive gastritis in 16%, and oesophagitis in 11%. Of the 289 patients, 40% had associated lesions, the commonest being gastritis (31), hiatal hernia (24), oesophageal varices (16), and oesophagitis (16). An oesophageal site of the bleeding was most often detected in the patients under 50 years of age (p less than 0.001) and a gastric site among those over 70 years (p less than 0.05). Mallory-Weiss lesions were significantly more often the cause of bleeding among the youngest patients than in other age groups (p less than 0.001). The bleeding lesion was located in the stomach in 60% of the women and in 42% of the men (p less than 0.01) and in the duodenum in 13% and 28% (p less than 0.01), respectively. The principal causes of this difference was the high incidence of gastritis in the women and duodenal ulcer in the men.