Intensive Care Network Podcasts

Peptic ulcer bleeding (PUB) carries a 10% risk of death within 30 days and accounts for 36–46% of emergency upper gastrointestinal bleedings (UGIBs). The annual incidence of hospitalization due to PUB is 19–57 per 100,000 persons. Most of these patients undergo esophago-gastro-duodenoscopy (EGD), estimated to 2000 patients in Denmark alone every year. The poor prognosis in PUB is partly due to the clinical condition itself, and partly due to the high prevalence of medical comorbidities. Hence, optimizing pre-, intra-, and post-endoscopic patient management are likely to be important in order to minimize the risk of death and improve outcome. Although duodenal ulcer (DU) and gastric ulcer (GU) seem to be identical diseases with a considerable overlap in both risk-factor profile and clinical manifestations, ulcer site could potentially affect outcome. However, the prognostic importance of ulcer site has not been extensively evaluated, and existing knowledge is ambiguous. Two systematic reviews of predictors of