[Endoscopic sclerotherapy of esophageal varices--studies of the technic and follow-up]

Abstract

Several prospective studies on the efficiency and technique of endoscopic sclerotherapy (EST) were performed among 300 patients with bleeding esophageal varices, 173 of which had been treated by EST. Contrasted with a comparable control group (n = 80), EST (n = 100) reduced the incidence of rebleedings (40% vs 13.3%; p less than 0.0005) and the lethality (46.7% vs 30.6%; p less than 0.05) during the observation period of 21 months. The paravariceal and the intravariceal injection techniques were compared in 20 patients each. A higher number of initial and repeated treatment sessions argued against the paravaricel technique (mean follow up: 4 years). In a randomized study on prophylactic EST we found a lower bleeding frequency (13% vs 39%) in 16 patients treated by EST compared to 18 controls.