Acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding, 10 years’ experience from Serbia

Aims To evaluate changes in clinical characteristics of patients who presented with AUGIB.

Methods 126 patients admitted during the year 2018. were compared with data from 124 patients admitted with AUGIB in 2013. year and with 121 patients from 2008. year.

Results The percentage of NSAID's and antiplatelets such as causes of AUGIB remained stable (63.63% vs. 68.55% vs. 65.87%), whereas the use of oral anticoagulants drugs increased significantly during this period (from 6.44%, across 12.1% in 2013. to 16.67%, P=0.041). In 2008. year 31.4% of AUGIB was from duodenal ulcer following gastric ulcer (26.44%), variceal bleeding (15.7%), gastric erosions (12.4%), duodenal erosions (8.26%), gastric and esophageal cancers (7.44%). Main reasons for AUGIB in 2013. year were: duodenal ulcer (25%), duodenal erosions 19.35%, gastric ulcer (15.32%), gastric erosions (10.48%), gastric and esophageal cancers (12.9%) and variceal bleeding (6.45%). In the year 2018. most frequent reason for AUGIB were: duodenal erosions 24.6%, duodenal ulcers 23.42%, gastric ulcers (15.87%), variceal bleeding (11.11%), gastric erosions (8.73%), gastric and esophageal cancers (8.73%). During the period of these 10 years duodenal erosions increased significantly (p=0.0027) while gastric ulcer decreased significantly (p‹0.05). Overall mortality was 14.05%, 9.68% and 10.32% (2008., 2013.,2018.)

Conclusions Patients with AUGIB are older with more comorbidities, their mortality remains unchanged. Main risk factors for AUGIB are NSAID's and antiplatelets use with clear trend of decreasing of peptic ulcer disease, mainly gastric ulcers like a reason of hemorrhage [1].

Conflicts of interest

Authors do not have any conflict of interest to disclose.

• 1 Lanas A., Dumonceau J., Hunt R.. et al. Non-variceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding. Nat Rev Dis Primers 4. 2018

Publication History

Article published online:
14 April 2023