Acute gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding is the most common GI diagnosis requiring hospitalization in the United States. Patients with acute GI bleeding either vomit up blood or have blood in their stool and must be evaluated in the hospital.
“When a patient arrives at the hospital with acute GI bleeding, physicians need to quickly figure out answers to three questions: Why is the patient bleeding? What supportive care can help them get through this episode of bleeding? How can I stop the bleeding long term?” said Dennis Shung, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine (Digestive Diseases, Biomedical Informatics and Data Science) and Director of Digital Health (Digestive Diseases).
While all acute GI bleeding is abnormal, some patients are very low-risk and may not need to remain in the hospital. Current guidelines recommend physicians use clinical risk scores, like the Glasgow Blatchford Score (GBS) or the Oakland Score, to help determine which patients may need medical intervention, such as a blood transfusion or endoscopic procedure, and which patients may be safely discharged from the hospital…
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