Annotation
Treatment of oesophageal varices
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
 |
Article |
|---|
Bleeding from oesophageal varices is the most common cause of serious gastrointestinal haemorrhage in children. Bleeding may occur at any age, but some patients with varices never bleed.1 The risk of bleeding is not linearly related to portal pressure, but to the size of the varix and the thickness and integrity of its wall.2 Thus varices are most likely to bleed if they project prominently into the oesophageal lumen, if the overlying mucosa is blue, and particularly if there are `cherry red spots' on the varix. Salicylate ingestion used to be recognised as an important precipitant.
The treatment of bleeding oesophageal varices is dependent on the
underlying cause. In patients with portal hypertension from intrahepatic liver disease treatment is dictated by the
latter and may determine the need for liver transplantation. Patients with good liver function and bleeding varices can, however, be successfully managed by treatment of their portal hypertension
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
- Full Text
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in ADC Online
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
