[10 years' experience with endoscopic sclerotherapy of esophagogastric varices]

We report on our 10 years' experience in endoscopic sclerotherapy. A total of 1054 patients (90% of them with liver cirrhosis) were treated. During the first seven years (1978-1985) the hospital mortality of the bleeders was 31.5%. During the last three years after the introduction of tissue adhesive the mortality rate has falling to 14.5%. The rate of patients with late recurrent hemorrhages sank from 16.6 to 7.8%. This improvement of the results is in our opinion due to the more sufficient control of bleeding and treatment of fundic varices. The sclerotherapy in the interval has an overall hospital mortality of 5-6% (for all patients regardless the Child-classification). Perforations occurred in less than 1% and stenoses requiring bougienage in 2-3%. The cumulative survival curve shows that after 10 years about 40% of the patients are still alive.