incidence and risk factors of upper gastrointestinal bleeding in pediatric intensive care unit admitted patients

background and objective: to assess the incidence and risk factors of upper gastrointestinal bleeding in children admitted to pediatric intensive care unit for more than 6 hrs. methods: we prospectively collected medical records of children between 1 month and 18 years old admit-ted to our 10 bed picu of a tertiary care university hospital between december 1, 2014 and may 30, 2015. de-mographic data, admission diagnosis and basic laboratory data were recorded. we defined upper gastrointestinal bleeding (ugi) as any evidence of blood in nasogastric aspirates, hematemesis and melena witnessed between minimum 6 hours to maximum 5 days after admission. we documented it and detected previously described factors for ugi bleeding such as mechanical ventilation, coagulopathy, organ failure, feeding, and drug prophy-laxis. finally data were used in a multivariate analysis. results: of 157 medical records, 148 patients were eligible. the incidence of ugi bleeding was 34.45%. the most common indication for picu admission was respiratory system dysfunction (32.2%). mechanical ven-tilation, thrombocytopenia and prolonged pt and ptt were the significant factors in our study using univariate analysis and mechanical ventilation was the only significant risk factor using multivariate analysis conclusion: the incidence of ugi bleeding in picu admitted patients is significant and mechanical ventila-tion is the most important risk factor for gi bleeding.