| Abstract: | Abstract: During a 5-year period from 1984 through 1988, an emergency endoscopy was performed for an upper digestive tract hemorrhage in 283 consecutive patients with 290 lesions. Of these, 54 patients were diagnosed as having hemorrhagic gastritis on the basis of the endoscopic findings and were employed as the subjects of the present study. They were classified on the basis of the presence/absence of liver cirrhosis into two groups, i. e. the cirrhosis group (C-group) and non-cirrhosis group (NC-group), and the two groups were comparatively studied. The incidence of hemorrhagic gastritis in hemorrhagic sources of the upper digestive tract was higher in the C-group than in the NC-group, and it was seen in the gastric body most frequently. In addition, no clear causes for hemorrhagic gastritis could be identified in many of the cases in the C-group. These clinical findings were thought to indicate that, in patients with liver cirrhosis, the gastric mucosa itself, especially of the gastric body, is in an impending state of mucosal hemorrhage. A hemorrhage was the major cause of death in the C-group. In patients with liver cirrhosis, the incidence of hemorrhagic gastritis had no correlation with the grade of esophageal varices, but was high in patients with severe liver cirrhosis. Thus, patients with severe liver cirrhosis were considered to be a high risk group of hemorrhagic gastritis. |
