Patients admitted to the emergency room with upper gastrointestinal bleeding: factors influencing recurrence or death.

The aim of this study was to determine the clinical, laboratory, and endoscopic findings that might be related to poor prognoses, such as rebleeding or death, in patients admitted to the emergency room with upper gastrointestinal (UGI) bleeding. A prospective evaluation was conducted in 99 patients with UGI bleeding who were admitted to the emergency room of Hacettepe University Medical School between May and December 2001. Twenty-four patients were considered to have a poor prognosis. In multivariate analyses, presence of diabetes mellitus or of visible vessel at endoscopy, treatment with proton pump inhibitors, and decrease in mean blood pressure were found to be independent predictors for poor prognoses in this population. Several factors, such as comorbidities, type of treatment, or clinical and endoscopic findings, were found to be related to rebleeding or death in patients admitted to the emergency room with UGI bleeding necessitating intensive care.