Acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding in patients on long-term oral anticoagulation therapy: Endoscopic findings, clinical management and outcome

Table 1 Clinical characteristics and outcome in patients with AUGIB while on oral anticoagulant therapy.

	Patients taking anticoagulants (n = 111)		Patients not taking anticoagulant (n = 604)
	n	(%)	n	(%)
Age, in year (±SD)1	67.7 (11.3)		62.9 (17.5)
Male/female	69/42		490/146
NSAIDs use	35	31.5	404	63.5
Coexisting illnesses (overall)	111	100	368	57.8
Blood transfusions	2.1	2.3	1.6	1.6
Hospitalization days	7.7	3.3	5.9	4.1
Emergency surgery (overall)	6/111	5.4	23/604	3.8
Total mortality (overall)	4/111	3.6	20/604	3.3

¹P = 0.001, ²P = 0.006.

Table 2 Causes of AUGIB.

	Patients taking anticoagulants (n=111)		Patients not taking anticoagulants (n= 604)
	n	(%)	n	(%)
Peptic ulcer	51	45	359	59.4
Gastric/duodenal erosions	12	10.8	43	7.1
Varices			84	13.9
Benign and malignant tumors	8	7.2	17	2.8
Mallory-Weiss tears	1	0.9	30	5
Vascular lesions, Dieulafoy’s lesions	4	3.6	6	0.9
Other diagnoses	1	0.9	17	2.8
Uncooperative patient	2	0.9	17	2.8
No cause of bleeding
(No identifiable source)	33	29.7	31	5.1

Table 3 Causes of bleeding in relation to the concurrent use of NSAIDs.

	Previous NSAID use (n = 35)		No NSAID use(n = 76)
	n	%	n	%
Peptic ulcer	26	74.3	25	32.9
Gastric/duodenal erosions	3	8.6	9	11.8
Benign and malignant tumors	2	5.7	6	7.9
Vascular lesions, Dieulafoy’s lesion	2	5.7	2	2.6
Mallory-Weiss tears, esophagitis	1	2.9
Uncooperative patient			2	1.3
No cause of bleeding (no identifiable source)	1	5.7	32	40.8

Table 4 Clinical outcome of patients in relation to the endoscopic findings.

	Negative endoscopy or gastroduodenitis (n = 45) n (%)	Other endoscopic lesions (n = 65) n (%)	P
Transfusions (SD)	1.3 (1.8)	3.0 (2.5)	0.004
Hospitalization days (SD)	7.5 (2.1)	8.2 (2.6)	NS
Rebleeding	1	10	0.038
Emergency surgical hemostasis	0	6	0.049
Mortality	1	3	NS