Prognostic factors in patients with active non-variceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding.

BACKGROUND AND STUDY AIMS: Acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding is one of the main causes of hospitalisation. The purpose of this study was to determine the prognostic factors in non-variceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Clinical outcomes, demographic and laboratory variables of the subjects were collected from the HIS software and national code with the SQL format from three hospitals in Qazvin. The data were linked to the database software designed by the author. Clinical and upper endoscopic findings of patients' records were collected through a questionnaire form in the designed software database.

RESULTS: In this study, 29.2% of patients with favourable outcome and 64.2% of patients with unfavourable clinical outcomes had a history of anticoagulant drug use before hospitalisation (p < 0.001). The prevalence of chronic cardiovascular disease, chronic liver disease, chronic lung disease, diabetes and dialysis was higher in subjects with poor clinical outcomes than those with a favourable clinical outcome. 53.1% of subjects with favourable clinical outcome and 90.5% of subjects with undesirable clinical outcomes received packed red blood cell transfusion (p < 0.001). 16.1% of subjects with desirable clinical outcome and 86.3% of subjects with undesirable clinical outcomes received endoscopic haemostatic treatment which was statistically significant (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION: Undesirable clinical outcome in patients with acute non-variceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding has a significant statistical association with longer hospitalisation, chronic underlying disease, anticoagulant administration, packed red blood cell infusion, higher Forrest stage, low systolic blood pressure, higher age, low haemoglobin, low platelet count, high INR and high BUN at the onset of diagnosis.