A prospective study of bidirectional endoscopy (colonoscopy and upper endoscopy) in the evaluation of patients with occult gastrointestinal bleeding.

Abstract

for the patient population described in this study, bidirectional endoscopy determined the source of OGIB in 50%. As expected, colonoscopy resulted in a higher cancer detection rate than EGD--yet EGD detected the origin of OGIB in 68% (36/53) of patients found to have an occult bleeding source, and resulted in a therapeutic initiation or a change in therapy for 30% of all patients.