Gastro-intestinal Bleed

Abstract

Gastro-intestinal bleed is not uncommon in patients under palliative care. The bleeding can be due to gastro-intestinal malignancies, coagulopathy or bleeding diathesis, or non-neoplastic conditions such as inflammation, peptic ulcer disease, vascular abnormalities, or infection. Such bleeding can be from arterial source. Portal venous source includes bleeding varices. Interventional radiology (IR) has a significant role in controlling bleed in these group of patients (Ramaswamy et al., World J Radiol 6:82–92, 2014). Once the source of bleed is identified, the arterial source can be embolized by selective/superselective transcatheter embolization. TIPSS or BRTO are performed in select cases of variceal haemorrhage.