Combination therapies for the endoscopic treatment of gastrointestinal bleeding

This review discusses the background and analysis of data in the literature regarding the effect of a combination of endoscopic therapies on the treatment of bleeding gastroduodenal ulcers. Although these techniques are commonly used, convincing data to support combinations of injection therapies are scarce, and various studies give somewhat conflicting results. In one study, a combination of the injection of adrenaline and a high dose of thrombin was superior to using adrenaline alone. The combination of injection therapy with a thermal method tends to give better results than injection therapy alone in several studies, but the difference is only statistically significant in one study (which uses the gold probe). The data regarding a combination of injection therapy with haemostatic clips are somewhat discordant regarding the effect of the haemoclip itself, but none of the studies found an advantage of combining the two modalities. Some studies suggest that subgroups may exist, such as ulcers with spurting haemorrhage, in which combined treatment might be more useful.