Summary
Acute variceal bleeding is one of the dreaded complications of liver cirrhosis which is unfortunately common in Egypt and carrying a high mortality risk.
Specific measures for managing acute variceal bleeding include pharmacological therapy as well as EGD to be performed quickly as possible, after ensuring general measures stabilizing the patient’s hemodynamics as well as antibiotic intake.
The present study was carried out on 90 consecutive cirrhotic patients (64 males & 26 females with a mean age 56.9±8.5 Ys) presenting with acute variceal bleeding and admitted to the Department of Hepatology, Gastroenterology and Infectious Diseases , Benha University Hospitals within the period between November 2009 to April 2012.
The etiology of cirrhosis in the studied cases was HCV in 79 patients, HBV in 4, combined HBV and HCV in 1 and 6 patients were negative to both HCV-Ab and HBsAg.
The studied cases were subdivided into two groups: survivors (group I) that comprised 70 patients (77.8%) and non survivors (group II) that comprised 20 patients (22.2%).
The present study revealed that, the in-hospital mortality rate was 22.2% . This is a relatively high figure which may be attributed to the delayed door-to-scope time because of our hospital schedule and absence of emergency endoscopy in this period beside the absence of advanced procedures to control bleeding like TIPS and emergency shunt surgeries that are available in the hospitals of other studies .
In the present study, there was a statistically highly significant relationship (P