Treatment of gastrointestinal bleeding with hemostatic powder (TC-325): a multicenter study

Introduction Hemostatic powder (TC-325) is a new tool for treatment of gastrointestinal bleeding that allows the treatment of large surfaces with active bleeding. The aim was to describe the initial success of TC-325 for the control of GI bleeding. Materials and methods We did a multicenter cohort study with patients admitted to the endoscopy service for GI bleeding. A format was generated to standardize the information obtained in each center. It was determined whether this treatment had been used as a single therapy or as a combination therapy. Descriptive statistics with medians and ranges, or averages with SD according to distribution. Results Eighty-one patients with 104 endoscopic procedures were included. The median number of endoscopic procedures was 1 (1–3). In the first procedure, the initial success rate was 98.8% ( n = 80), failure rate was 1.2% ( n = 1), and rebleeding rate was 20% ( n = 16). The majority of rebleeding cases occurred within the first 3 days (12/16, 75%). There was no association between rebleeding and etiology (malignant or benign; P = 0.6). In first procedure, 44 (54%) cases had monotherapy with TC-325 and 37 (46%) cases had a combined endoscopic therapy. There were no differences in initial success or rebleeding rates when TC-325 was used as monotherapy versus combined therapy ( P = 0.7). The mortality rate was 4% (3/81). Conclusion TC-325 is effective for achieving initial control of bleeding in patients with different GI etiologies. The rate of bleeding recurrence is considerable in both patients with benign and malignant etiology.