Multiinstitutional evaluation of local injection of absolute ethanol as the new hemostatic method for upper G-I tract bleeding.

Local injection of absolute ethanol was proven effective for hemostasis of gastrointestinal bleeding in our fundamental (Asaki et al. 1983a) and clinical (Asaki et al. 1983b) studies. The purpose of the present paper is to report the results obtained in 258 hemorrhagic foci in 152 unselected cases treated with this method at 6 major hospitals in the Tohoku area in Japan. Sixty (39%) of these 152 cases had shock symptoms due to hemorrhage. Gastric and duodenal ulcers were responsible for the hemorrhage in about 90% of the cases in which our method was applied to hemostasis. Eighty-nine (59%) of the 152 cases had some form of complications such as malignant tumors or liver cirrhosis. Hemorrhage due to postoperative stress ulcer after major surgeries including renal implantation or laryngectomy for resection of cancer was seen in 20 cases (13%). The condition of hemorrhage immediately before the treatment with our technique was classified as spouting hemorrhage for 8 foci (3%), pulsating hemorrhage for 22 foci (9%), adhesion of clot for 179 foci (69%), and hemorrhage from veins and capillaries for 49 foci (19%). In all of these cases temporary hemostasis was obtained. Rebleeding occurred in 17 cases (7%) including 5 cases in which hemostasis was successfully obtained by the repeated use of our method. In 4 of the 17 cases, in which repeated endoscopy was infeasible, emergency surgery was performed. In the remaining 8 lesions in 8 cases, new bleeding or rebleeding occurred more than 1 week after the initial hemostasis had been obtained. Six of these 8 cases died from rebleeding due to DIC syndrome. With our method complete hemostasis was obtained in 144 of 152 cases (95%) including 11 cases (7%) which underwent elective surgical operation.