ABSTRACT

We aimed to investigate patients with lower gastrointestinal bleeding who presented to the emergency department requiring initial conventional angiography. We report risk-stratified and mesenteric conventional angiography outcomes.

We retrospectively reviewed patients with lower gastrointestinal bleeding between 2001 and 2012. We included all consecutive patients with clinical lower gastrointestinal bleeding with a requirement of further angiography and possible embolization. Patients who had prior interventions or surgery were excluded.

A total of 88 patients (35 women, 53 men) with a median age of 71 years (range, 23–99 years) were included in the analysis. Conventional angiography was positive and endovascular treatment was intended in 35 patients. Once the source of bleeding was found angiographically, endovascular treatment had a technical success rate of 90.3% and clinical success rate of 71.4%. Overall early rebleeding rate (<30 days) was 14.8% and late rebleeding rate (>30 days) was 13.6%.

Identifying the source of lower gastrointestinal bleeding remains to be a clinical and angiographic challenge. Although we did not observe an association between mortality and clinical success, increased early rebleeding rates were associated with higher mortality rates.