View clinical trials related to Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage.
Filter by:Patients presenting to the emergency room with upper gastrointestinal bleeding and a Glasgow Blatchford score of zero will be randomly assigned to further care in the inpatient vs. outpatient setting. The hypothesis of this study is that patients who are managed as outpatients will require interventions at a rate not higher than those managed as inpatients and will have lower direct healthcare costs.
The small bowel is poorly suited to standard endoscopy techniques due to its anatomical differences from the colon and the upper gastrointestinal tract. The small bowel has an average length of 6.7 m, with a free mesentery that resists standard "push to advance" endoscopy techniques. New developments in overtubes, which are placed over an enteroscope, have revolutionized doctors ability to deeply intubate the small bowel. Three types of 'augmented' enteroscopy, double balloon enteroscopy (DBE), single balloon enteroscopy (SBE) and spiral enteroscopy (SE), have been developed. Although studies have been performed on these individual techniques, there are no studies comparing SBE and SE, the two techniques used in Johns Hopkins. The investigators propose performing a prospective, randomised trial, to assess the differences between these two techniques. The question of what differences there are between these two techniques, in terms of depth of insertion, diagnostic and therapeutic yields, time required for the procedure and the sedation requirements, are important questions to answer, and depending on the results, would affect the investigators approach to patients with small bowel disease.
A certain molecule floating in the blood may represent a risk of lung injury after a transfusion. We are determining whether detection of this molecule on a simple blood clotting test will predict the development of lung injury due to transfusion in bleeding patients with chronic liver disease.
Transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI) is the most common cause of transfusion-related morbidity and mortality in the United States. It is very common and often unrecognized in the critically ill with the greatest incidence occurring in bleeding patients with liver disease. Plasma is the most blood component associated with this deadly complication and therefore patients with liver disease who frequently receive transfused plasma are at increased risk. The optimal plasma transfusion strategy for bleeding patients with liver disease is unknown and the investigators will evaluate this clinical question in a small pilot randomized controlled trial. The invstigators hypothesize that targetting a more restrictive INR Target (2.5) vs. an INR Target (1.8) will result in less hypoxemia, a TRALI surrogate without increasing bleeding complications.
Obscure gastrointestinal bleeding (OGIB) has been one of the most challenging area in the field of gastroenterology, as small bowel is beyond the reach of ordinary endoscopes like oesophagogastroduodenoscopy (OGD) and colonoscopy. Thanks for the latest technological advancement for investigating small intestine, we are now capable of obtaining intraluminal images safely through capsule endoscopy (CE). Its role in obscure gastrointestinal bleeding, Crohn's disease and other small bowel pathologies has already been proven, and nowadays it is suggested by various authorities to be the first-line modality among all small bowel investigations. The investigators group has showed that CE can alter the clinical management of patients with OGIB - patients with negative CE has lower rebleeding rate, and therefore we may adopt a conservative approach for them. Although supported by some other group as well, conflicting results were still reported in the literature about the out-come of these patients. The main criticisms for these studies are that, CE can only identify 61% of the underlying small bowel bleeding pathology, and one can never ascertain the outcome of patients with negative CE examination. Apparently there is still room for improvement in the current CE technology.
Development of a new diagnostic detection tool for gastrointestinal bleeding.
Study hypothesis is that performing early colonoscopy in patients who present to the hospital with lower GI bleeding improves their outcome. Patients who are admitted with bleeding from their rectum and a negative endoscopic exam of the stomach and upper intestine are randomized (like flipping a coin) to receive a colonsoscopy either as an emergency (within 12 hours) or as a routine procedure (36 hours after admission). Patients are followed during their hospitalization to see if they have further bleeding, if they require blood transfusions, if they need other diagnostic tests, if they need surgery or other treatments, and how long they stay in the hospital.
The investigators hypothesize that high dose esomeprazole 80mg given as a bolus, followed by 8mg/h would render gastric pH near neutral and that pH control with esomeprazole given in such a high dose either intravenous or orally is identical.