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.