Abstract
To evaluate efficacy of prophylactic endoscopic injection sclerotherapy (EIS) for gastric varices, we examined prognosis of patients with gastric varices treated with and without prophylactic EIS. The EIS group was consisted of 31 patients and non-EIS group was consisted of 30 patients. Presence of F2 or F3 gastric varices was endoscopically confirmed in all patients, although they did not have episodes of variceal bleeding. EIS was performed under fluoroscopy by injecting 5% ethanolamine oleate mixed with iopamidol directly into gastric varices. Prognosis was estimated by comparing cumulative bleeding rates, mortality from bleeding and whole mortality between the EIS and non-EIS groups. Regulatory factors for the prognosis were further examined by multivariate analyses. Cumulative bleeding rates, mortality from bleeding and whole mortality in the EIS group were be significantly lower than those of the non-EIS group. Furthermore, prophylactic EIS was shown to be one of significant a regulatory factors for bleeding rates and mortality by using a proportional hazard model. These prognostic analyses suggest that prophylactic EIS is extremely useful for the treatment of F2 and F3 gastric varices.
