Experience in sclerotherapy for esophagogastric variceal bleeding

To evaluate the efficacy of endoscopic variceal sclerotherapy (EVS) for esophago gastric variceal bleeding.

A retrospective analysis was made on 1010 patients with esophagogastric variceal bleeding who underwent sclerotherapy, among whom there were 834 patients with cirrhosis, 160 with hepatocarcinoma, 12 with Budd-Chiari syndrome and 4 with congenital liver fibrosis. Totally, 3203 sessions of sclerotherapy were performed, including 602 sessions of emergency sclerotherapy and 2601 of selective surgery. The average number of sessions of sclerotherapy for the initial treatment in 710 cirrhosis patients who received continuous sclerotherapy was 3.2 +/- 1.1 times. Follow-up was done in 579 cirrhosis patients for 3-157 months, with an average period of 42.5+/- 32.8 months.

The rate of emergency hemostasis in the whole group was 97.0%. The rate of complications was 13.4%, and the mortality rate was 1.8%. The rate of complete eradication and basically complete eradication of esophagogastric varices in cirrhosis patients was 84.1%. The late rebleeding rate was 23.7%, and the survival rates were 95.8% +/- 0.8%, 86.1% +/- 1.6%, 74.5% +/- 2.4%, 53.6% +/- 3.8% at 1, 3, 5 and 10 years, respectively, according to Kaplan-Meier analysis.

EVS is an important method for the treatment of esophagogastric variceal bleeding.