Acute gastrointestinal hemorrhage of small-bowel origin

Of 305 patients with acute gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding, the site was found to be the small bowel in 16. In all cases the cause was proved at surgery or autopsy: diagnoses included vascular malformation, aorto-enteric fistula, primary or metastatic tumor, ulcer, tuberculous ileitis, and sarcoidosis. While it is uncommon for acute GI bleeding to originate in the small bowel, approximately one third of the patients with acute rectal bleeding in this series had a bleeding site in the small bowel.