Angiotherapy with Mallory-Weiss tear.

Most patients with upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage from Mallory-Weiss tear cease bleeding spontaneously and do not require specific therapy. Patients who either continue to bleed and those who rebleed represent specific therapeutic problems. Angiotherapy, either intraarterial vasopressin infusion (13 cases) or arterial embolization (two cases), was used to treat 15 patients with persistently bleeding Mallory-Weiss tears. Permanent hemostasis was achieved in the majority of patients treated. Results from the current study are compared with those previously reported in the literature. In addition the complications of each treatment method are discussed with emphasis on the cardiac complications of vasopressin.