Mallory-Weiss syndrome. A study of 224 patients.

With the increasing early use of endoscopy, Mallory-Weiss syndrome has been found to be the cause of upper gastrointestinal bleeding in 224 of 2,175 (10.3 percent) patients studied. Since Mallory-Weiss syndrome is a self-limiting disease in more than 90 percent of patients, conservative treatment, including multiple transfusion, electrocoagulation, and compression by a Sengstaken-Blakemore tube in descending order of use, is the treatment of choice, especially in the medically debilitated patient. The cirrhotic patient poses special difficulty and generally has a poor outcome no matter what the treatment. Prolapse of the stomach into the esophagus may be an etiologic factor in a small subgroup of patients.