Upper gastrointestinal bleeding, diagnosis and treatment: a literature review

Abstract

Introduction: Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding or Upper Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage (UGI) is a common condition considered a medical emergency, requiring an accurate diagnosis to provide appropriate treatment to each patient and thus avoid comorbidities and high mortality. Objective: To evaluate and correlate the diagnostic and therapeutic strategies used in the context of upper gastrointestinal bleeding in the current literature. Materials and Methods: Literature review in SciELO, Google Scholar and PubMed. Discussion: An initial evaluation of UGI patients requires basic support measures, such as volume replacement, bleeding and infection control, pharmacological and/or endoscopic therapy. The management should be evaluated according to the Glasgow Blatchford Score (GBS), the Forrest endoscopic classification, endoscopy, associated with Proton Pump Inhibitors, the therapeutic method of choice in UGIB. It was evidenced that the diagnostic and therapeutic strategies mainly depend on hemodynamic stability, the previous history of variceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding; being the identification method of utmost relevance among the most used and that can also be therapeutic, high relevance is the upper digestive endoscopy (UDE), which has its biases and risk factors. With UDE, other more current and diagnostically more precise methods can be combined.