A Spanish survey of COVID-19 patients suggests that upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGB) does not affect in-hospital mortality. It also found that fewer COVID-19–positive patients underwent endoscopies, but there was no statistically significant difference in in-hospital mortality outcome as a result of delays.
“In-hospital mortality in COVID-19 patients with upper-GI bleeding seemed to be more influenced by COVID-19 than by upper-GI bleeding, and that’s something I think is important for us to know,” Gyanprakash Ketwaroo, MD, associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, said in an interview. Dr. Ketwaroo was not involved in the study.
The results weren’t a surprise, but they do provide some reassurance. “It’s probably what I expected. Initially, we thought there might be some COVID-19 related (GI) lesions, but that didn’t seem to be borne out. So we thought the bleeding was related to (the patient) being in a hospital or the typical reasons for bleeding. It’s also what I expected that less endoscopies would be performed in these patients, and even though fewer endoscopies were performed, the outcomes were still similar. I think it’s what most people expected,” said Dr. Ketwaroo.
The study was published online Nov. 25 in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, and led by Rebeca González González, MD, of Severo Ochoa University Hospital in Leganés, Madrid, and Pascual Piñera-Salmerón, MD, of Reina Sofia University General Hospital in Murcia, Spain. The researchers retrospectively analyzed data on 71,904 COVID-19 patients at 62 emergency departments in Spain, and compared 83 patients who had COVID-19 and UGB to two control groups: 249 randomly selected COVID-19 patients without UGB, and 249 randomly selected non-COVID-19 patients with UGB.
They found that 1.11% of COVID-19 patients presented with UGB, compared with 1.78% of non-COVID-19 patients at emergency departments. In patients with COVID-19, risk of UGB was associated with hemoglobin values < 10 g/L (odds ratio [OR], 34.255, 95% confidence interval [CI], 12.752-92.021), abdominal pain (OR, 11.4; 95% CI, 5.092-25.944), and systolic blood pressure < 90 mm Hg (OR, 11.096; 95% CI, 2.975-41.390).
Compared with non-COVID-19 patients with UGB, those COVID-19 patients with UGB were more likely to have interstitial lung infiltrates (OR, 66.42; 95% CI, 15.364-287.223) and ground-glass opacities (OR, 21.27; 95% CI, 9.720-46.567) in chest radiograph, as well as fever (OR, 34.67; 95% CI, 11.719-102.572) and cough (OR, 26.4; 95% CI, 8.845-78.806).
Gastroscopy and endoscopic procedures were lower in patients with COVID-19 than in the general population (gastroscopy OR, 0.269; 95% CI, 0.160-0.453: endoscopy OR, 0.26; 95% CI, 0.165-0.623). There was no difference between the two groups with respect to endoscopic findings. After adjustment for age and sex, the only significant difference between COVID-19 patients with UGB and COVID-19 patients without UGB was a higher rate of intensive care unit admission (OR, 2.98; 95% CI, 1.16-7.65). Differences between COVID-19 patients with UGB and non–COVID-19 patients with UGB included higher rates of ICU admission (OR, 3.29; 95% CI, 1.28-8.47), prolonged hospitalizations (OR, 2.02; 95% CI, 1.15-3.55), and in-hospital mortality (OR, 2.05; 95% CI, 1.09-3.86).
UGB development was not associated with increased in-hospital mortality in COVID-19 patients (OR, 1.14; 95% CI, 0.59-2.19).
A limitation to the study it was that it was performed in Spain, where endoscopies are performed in the emergency department, and where there are different thresholds for admission to the intensive care unit than in the United States.
The authors did not report a funding source. Dr. Ketwaroo has no relevant financial disclosures.
SOURCE: González González R et al. J Clin Gastroenterol. 10.1097/MCG.0000000000001465.