The Italian 10-point score for the prediction of death was successfully validated in this independent population of patients with non-variceal gastrointestinal bleeding. The PNED score is accurate and superior to the Rockall score. Further external validation at the international level is needed.

These results indicate that 30-day mortality for nonvariceal bleeding is low. Deaths occurred predominantly in elderly patients with severe comorbidities or those with failure of endoscopic intention to treatment.

Over a period of 7 years the use of SBCE in Lombardia increased steadily confirming, in clinical practice, a high diagnostic yield and an acceptable safety profile.

No abstract

This prospective, controlled study was designed in order to evaluate the response rate to α-interferon (IFN) versus no treatment in 63 patients affected by chronic hepatitis C. Fifty-two patients were randomly chosen to receive no treatment of IFN alfa-2b (6 MU 3 times weekly for the first month and 3 MU for the next 11 months). Eleven additional patients were crossed to active treatment after a 1-year control period without any change of serum pattern and were therefore enrolled both as controls and cases. Four patients had to be withdrawn from the active treatment for adverse effects. Sixteen out of the remaining 23 had normal alanine aminotransferase (ALT) values at the end of the treatment, and 14 were still normal 12 months later. A liver biopsy, taken 6 months after the end of the treatment, showed improvement in 12 patients and normalization in 1. Only 1 out of the 25 controls had transaminase normalization and 5 a decrease. One of them showed also a histological improvement. Eight of the 11 case/control patients showed ALT normalization after IFN administration, 5 of them histological improvement and 2 liver normalization. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA became negative in 13 of 17 cases in whom the assay was carried out. Therefore this study confirms that the long-term administration of α-IFN induced a prolonged remission of disease activity in over 50% of the patients and the clearance of HCV RNA in the majority of the responders.