Abstract
PURPOSE: 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. METHODS: 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. RESULTS: 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%. CONCLUSION: 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.