title: Gastrointestinal bleeding. Endoscopic diagnosis.
abstract: Emergency endoscopy is the most accurate method of diagnosis in acute upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage. As yet this increased diagnostic accuracy has not been shown to affect the final outcome and a double-contrast barium meal is almost as accurate in the diagnosis of chronic lesions. Nevertheless, the decision to operate on a bleeding patient is difficult to make without a diagnosis and this is most accurately made initially by endoscopy followed by angiography or a barium meal when necessary.
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D004381:Duodenal Ulcer / Q000175:diagnosis; D004724:Endoscopy / Q000379:methods*; D006471:Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005773:Gastroscopy / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D010438:Peptic Ulcer Hemorrhage / Q000175:diagnosis; D013276:Stomach Ulcer / Q000175:diagnosis