Acute lower gastrointestinal bleeding: predictive factors and clinical outcome for the patients who needed first-time mesenteric conventional angiography.

PURPOSE: We aimed to investigate patients with lower gastrointestinal bleeding who presented to the emergency department requiring initial conventional angiography. We report risk-stratified and mesenteric conventional angiography outcomes. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed patients with lower gastrointestinal bleeding between 2001 and 2012. We included all consecutive patients with clinical lower gastrointestinal bleeding with a requirement of further angiography and possible embolization. Patients who had prior interventions or surgery were excluded. RESULTS: A total of 88 patients (35 women, 53 men) with a median age of 71 years (range, 23-99 years) were included in the analysis. Conventional angiography was positive and endovascular treatment was intended in 35 patients. Once the source of bleeding was found angiographically, endovascular treatment had a technical success rate of 90.3% and clinical success rate of 71.4%. Overall early rebleeding rate (<30 days) was 14.8% and late rebleeding rate (>30 days) was 13.6%. CONCLUSION: Identifying the source of lower gastrointestinal bleeding remains to be a clinical and angiographic challenge. Although we did not observe an association between mortality and clinical success, increased early rebleeding rates were associated with higher mortality rates.

Outcomes of patients with acute upper gastrointestinal nonvariceal hemorrhage referred to interventional radiology for potential embolotherapy.

PURPOSE: To report the outcomes following catheter angiography with or without embolization in patients with acute upper gastrointestinal nonvariceal hemorrhage (UGINH). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A review of electronic medical records was performed to identify all potential patients for this study between 2001 and 2011. Patients with first-time UGINH who required angiographic localization and endovascular treatment were included. Patients with variceal bleeding and prior surgical or endovascular intervention for the gastrointestinal system were excluded. Society of Interventional Radiology guidelines and American College of Radiology "appropriateness criteria" reporting standards were followed. RESULTS: We identified 74 patients (men/women=46/28) with a mean age of 60 years. Thirty-four patients were found to have active bleeding on angiography. One patient from this group did not undergo embolization because of an angiographic diagnosis of aortoenteric fistula. Technical failure was encountered in 2/34 patients; therefore, the technical success of embolization was 94%. Forty of 74 patients showed no angiographic evidence of active bleeding; 18 patients underwent prophylactic embolization using endoscopically placed clips as targets; and 22 patients had no embolotherapy. Thus, we grouped the patients into 3 groups: (1) therapeutic embolization; (2) prophylactic/empiric embolization; and (3) no embolotherapy groups. The clinical success of embolization was 67% to 68% in the therapeutic embolization group and 67% in the prophylactic embolization group. Early rebleeding rates were 33.8%, 51.6%, 33.3%, and 12% among all the patients, the therapeutic embolization group, the prophylactic embolization group, and the no endovascular treatment group, respectively. Mortality was significantly high in patients with advanced age (P=0.001), cerebrovascular disorders (P=0.037), and positive angiography (P=0.026), even when clinical success was achieved. CONCLUSIONS: Acute UGINH remains a clinical challenge with increased mortality rates, even with high technical success rates. Patients with negative findings on angiography have lower early rebleeding rates than patients with active bleeding during angiography or endoscopy-guided prophylactic/empiric embolization.