Timing of upper gastrointestinal endoscopy does not influence short-term outcomes in patients with acute variceal bleeding

AIM: To examine the association between the timing of endoscopy and the short-term outcomes of acute variceal bleeding in cirrhotic patients. METHODS: This retrospective study included 274 consecutive patients admitted with acute esophageal variceal bleeding of two tertiary hospitals in Korea. We adjusted confounding factors using the Cox proportional hazards model and the inverse probability weighting (IPW) method. The primary outcome was the mortality of patients within 6 wk. RESULTS: A total of 173 patients received urgent endoscopy (i.e., ≤ 12 h after admission), and 101 patients received non-urgent endoscopy (> 12 h after admission). The 6-wk mortality rate was 22.5% in the urgent endoscopy group and 29.7% in the non-urgent endoscopy group, and there was no significant difference between the two groups before (P = 0.266) and after IPW (P = 0.639). The length of hospital stay was statistically different between the urgent group and non-urgent group (P = 0.033); however, there was no significant difference in the in-hospital mortality rate between the two groups (8.1% vs 7.9%, P = 0.960). In multivariate analyses, timing of endoscopy was not associated with 6-wk mortality (hazard ratio, 1.297; 95% confidence interval, 0.806-2.089; P = 0.284). CONCLUSION: In cirrhotic patients with acute variceal bleeding, the timing of endoscopy may be independent of short-term mortality.