Acute gastric bleeding due to diffuse erosive gastritis. Causes of the surgical failures and results from a policy after treatment of 115 cases.

One hundred and fifteen cases with acute gastric bleeding due to diffuse erosive gastritis, seen and treated surgically from 1964 to 1980, are presented in this paper. An attempt is made to discuss and assess the causes of failure and of high mortality encountered after surgical approach in these cases. It is postulate from the results obtained in this study that proximal gastric vagotomy offers the more promising chances for the successful management of this disease, and that immediate re-operation in cases of persisting postoperative re-bleeding greatly eliminates and diminishes the high mortality which has been proved to be due mainly to a prolonged high postoperative re-bleeding rate.