Prophylactic endoscopic sclerotherapy of esophageal varices in liver cirrhosis--long-term follow-up and final results of a multicenter prospective controlled randomized trial in Vienna.

This study reports the final results of a randomized multicenter trial on prophylactic endoscopic sclerotherapy of large esophageal varices in patients with liver cirrhosis. Forty-one patients received prophylactic treatment and 41 patients were in the control group. A first analysis 3 years after beginning the study revealed no significant difference in the distribution of the bleeding free intervals between both groups, but indicated a tendency towards longer survival of patients with prophylactic sclerotherapy. The follow-up of patients was continued for an additional 3 years. After this time, 53.7% of patients in the sclerotherapy group and 39.1% of patients in the control group were still alive. During the study period of 6 years, variceal bleeding was observed in 31.7% of patients in the sclerotherapy group and in 36.6% of patients in the control group. Neither survival nor incidence of bleeding were statistically different between the two groups. The etiology of cirrhosis did not influence the survival.