[Pathogenesis and prevention of gastrointestinal complications following transcatheter arterial embolization]

Prospective evaluation of gastrointestinal complications after transcatheter arterial embolization (TAE) was performed on 149 TAEs of 133 patients with endoscopy in order to evaluate whether the use of antiulcer medication can prevent such complications. In 21 of 141 TAEs (14%) there developed gastrointestinal complications. The incidence of complications with administration of H2-blocker was 30.4%, whereas the incidence with administration of PGE1 and without medication were 2.8% (p less than 0.01) and 9.0%, respectively. It has been suggested that such complications are mainly due to backflow of the embolic materials to the gastric artery. These findings indicates that decrease of gastric mucosal blood flow due to backflow of the embolic materials to the gastric artery cause the gastrointestinal complications.