[Mallory-Weiss syndrome. Considerations on 27 cases]

Twenty seven patients, inspected by endoscope, and diagnosed as having the Mallory-Weiss syndrome, have been studied taking into account their age, sex, background, clinic presentation, manifestations, number of lacerations, associated lesions and evolution. Twenty three of them were males and 4 females. The age average was 46.7 years. Only 8 patients had intra-abdominal increased pressure, suffering retching and vomiting 7 of them, while one had a cough access. Out of the 21 patients that we controlled, 9 were chronic alcoholism while 3 had ethanol intoxication previously. Immediate prior ingestion of salicylates had taken place in 6 patients. The clinical presentation of 22 of them was gastrointestinal bleeding, that is, 4.9% of all the upper endoscopies carried out within the bleeding patients. Single laceration was present in 22 cases, double one in 4, and triple in 1. We have frequently found endoscopy lesions associated, the most common one (37%), was hiatal hernia. They all were medically treated except one, who was operated because of gastric perforation was associated. Just one of the Mallory-Weiss syndrome patient died, due to an associated diffused bleeding gastritis.