Acute upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage with negative barium-meal x-ray findings: follow-up investigation.

One-hundred and one patients admitted to hospital with acute upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage whose initial barium-meal X-ray examination revealed no abnormality have been followed up 5 to 14 years later. Forty-five were symptom-free, and 8 had dyspepsia, but the barium-meal X-ray findings were still normal. Disease of the lower oesophagus, the stomach or the duodenum was found in 20, 16 of whom had a chronic peptic ulcer and two had gastric carcinoma. There was a poor prognosis for those gastric-ulcer patients whose diagnosis had been missed initially.