Endoscopic local injection of hypertonic saline-epinephrine solution to arrest hemorrhage from the upper gastrointestinal tract.

For the purpose of arresting hemorrhage from the upper gastrointestinal tract we developed a method of endoscopic local injection of hypertonic saline-epinephrine solution, consisting of 3.6% or 7.1% sodium chloride with 0.005% epinephrine, which was locally injected around the base of the bleeding vessel under endoscopy. During the period between October 1978 and September 1983, a total of 158 patients underwent treatment for hemostasis by this method. The major causes of bleeding in our study consisted of gastric ulcers (114) and duodenal ulcers (15). The overall effective rate of hemostasis was 98.1%. By applying this method, the rate of emergency operation for patients with bleeding from the upper gastrointestinal tract was significantly reduced from 21.7% (15/69) to 0.8% (1/128).