10% of patients were immediately discharged; however, if predictive variables obtained in the multivariate analysis had been used, hospitalization could have been prevented in 34% of patients. A total of 77 patients were included in the prospective analysis. Although only 19.5% of patients were immediately discharged without complications, 29 patients (37.7%) were theoretically suitable for early discharge. Conclusions:  Patients with UGIB who have clean-based ulcers and are stable on admission

can be safely discharged immediately after endoscopy. Implementation of the clinical practice guideline safely reduced hospital admission for those patients. Upper gastrointestinal bleeding Selleckchem MAPK Inhibitor Library (UGIB) is a common indication for hospitalization, with 50 to 150 cases per 100 000 inhabitants each year, and high morbidity and mortality rates.1 Peptic ulcer is the most frequent cause of UGIB, representing at Opaganib in vitro least 50% of cases.2 Mortality from UGIB remains between 5% and 10%, although the outcome is favorable in most patients with only medical treatment and observation.1 As a current standard of care, most physicians still indicate hospital admission of all patients

with UGIB, regardless of etiology and the severity of the hemorrhage. This decision simplifies clinical practice but increases hospitalization rates and increases costs and the length of stay, obviously negatively influencing patient care.3 Stratifying individual cases into a low-risk subset could be invaluable when deciding on an appropriate hospital. Numerous investigators have called for the development of a composite scoring system using clinical and endoscopic features to predict risk of persistent or recurrent bleeding.3 We

have previously developed guidelines that accurately identified patients with low-risk of bleeding in the acute phase of UGIB.4 Variables associated with unfavorable evolution were systolic blood pressure ≤ 100 mmHg, heart rate ≥ 100 bpm and high-risk lesions assessed using the Forrest classification. In the present study, we prospectively measured the risks, benefits and acceptability (compliance) medchemexpress of a clinical practice guideline recommending early discharge (based on previously developed risk assessment strategy) for patients with UGIB who were considered low-risk for subsequent re-bleeding. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to validate prospectively a retrospectively designed clinical practice guideline and to know if the implementation of this guideline could reduce hospital length of stay while maintaining or improving quality of care compared with previous standard practice. The practice guideline was derived from a 3-year retrospective analysis of all UGIB episodes evaluated in our hospital.