Gastrointestinal bleeding of obscure origin: role of enteroclysis.

The purpose of this work was to assess retrospectively the yield of enteroclysis in 124 unselected patients presenting with obscure gastrointestinal bleeding. Of 1000 consecutive patients who were examined by enteroclysis 124 presented with occult gastrointestinal bleeding. A total of 61 patients with an unknown source of bleeding at the time of discharge, but with established gastrointestinal bleeding, were followed up by questionnaire to correlate the initial degree of bleeding with the incidence of recurrence of bleeding. Enteroclysis was normal in 109 cases. An abnormality was found subsequently be the cause of bleeding in the small intestine in 16 patients. Enteroclysis was positive in 14 cases, negative in 2 and false positive in 1. There was positive correlation between the initial degree of haemorrhage and the rate of recurrence. Enteroclysis detected the cause in 11% of patients who presented with bleeding of unknown origin. In patients with minor haemorrhage there was no recurrence of bleeding in most cases.