Effective endoscopic treatment of Mallory-Weiss syndrome using Glasgow-Blatchford score and Forrest classification

There is limited data on whether scoring systems can be used to predict clinical outcomes in patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding due to Mallory-Weiss syndrome (MWS). We aimed to evaluate whether the Glasgow-Blatchford score (GBS) could be effective in predicting clinical outcomes of bleeding MWS and to investigate the predictive ability of the Forrest classification for rebleeding and assess the effective endoscopic modalities for bleeding control in MWS.

From January 2004 to December 2012 168 patients were diagnosed with MWS in the Asan Medical Center Emergency Department. We analyzed their clinical outcomes, including endoscopic treatment, transfusion and admission as well as the rates of rebleeding and mortality using GBS and the Forrest classification, retrospectively.

Endoscopic treatment was applied to patients. The GBS was significantly higher in patients treated with endoscopic therapy than in the conservative treatment group (6.8 ± 3.7 vs 5.1 ± 4.7, P = 0.011). In patients with a GBS of >6 the rates of endoscopic treatment and rebleeding and the need for transfusion and admission were significantly higher (all P < 0.05). The Forrest classification was able to predict recurrent bleeding (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve 0.723, 95% confidence interval 0.609-0.836, P = 0.025). Hemoclip-based therapy and band ligation achieved higher success rates than did injection therapy alone in preventing rebleeding (96.4%, 88.9% and 71.4%, P = 0.013).

In MWS, GBS might be useful for predicting clinical outcomes and the Forrest classification in predicting recurrent bleeding.