Predicting Mortality Risk in Patients with Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding

Several scoring systems aim to identify which patients with nonvariceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) are likely to have poor outcomes and, therefore, require vigorous care (e.g., JW Gastroenterol May 15 2009). Investigators in Italy previously derived one such system, known as PNED, by prospectively studying 1020 patients hospitalized with acute nonvariceal UGIB at 21 centers (JW Gastroenterol Oct 10 2008). Using logistic regression analysis, the researchers identified 10 independent risk factors for 30-day bleeding-related mortality; these became the components of the 10-point PNED score.

The researchers have now validated their scoring system in a cohort of 1360 consecutive patients who presented with nonvariceal UGIB to the same…