The usefulness of endoscopic hemoclipping for bleeding Dieulafoy lesions

Dieulafoy lesion is a rare cause of massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage, most commonly from the proximal stomach. Surgery was regarded as the treatment of choice in the past, but recently endoscopic management has become the standard approach. However, the effectiveness of various endoscopic modalities in treating bleeding Dieulafoy lesion has been little studied. This study was therefore done to compare the hemostatic efficacy of endoscopic hemoclipping and epinephrine injection therapy.

Between January 1998 and December 2001, a consecutive series of 32 patients with bleeding Dieulafoy lesion underwent endoscopic treatment. They were randomly treated either by endoscopic epinephrine injection therapy (n = 16) or by hemoclipping (n = 16). We compared mortality rate, primary hemostasis rate, and rebleeding rate between two groups.

There was no bleeding-related death in either group. There was no significant difference in primary hemostasis rates between the hemoclipping group (93.8 %) and epinephrine injection group (87.5 %, P = 1.00). There was a trend toward a lower rate of need for multiple endoscopic sessions to achieve permanent hemostasis in the hemoclipping group compared with the epinephrine injection group (6.3 % vs. 31.3 %, P = 0.086). Hemoclipping was significantly more effective in preventing recurrent bleeding than epinephrine injection therapy (0 % vs. 35.7 %, P < 0.05). With regard to lesion site, hemoclipping was significantly more effective in preventing recurrent bleeding of gastric body Dieulafoy lesion than epinephrine injection therapy (0 % vs. 50 %, P < 0.05).

Bleeding from Dieulafoy lesion was well controlled by therapeutic endoscopic procedures. Hemoclipping was more effective for Dieulafoy lesion than epinephrine injection therapy, with less need for subsequent endoscopy.