A Novel Marker Affecting Survival In Acute Non-Variceal Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding: Cardiac Troponin I

Introduction: Acute non-variceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding (ANVUGIB) is an important public health problem with high rates of morbidity and mortality. ANVUGIB results in hypovolemia, hypotension, and shock, increasing cardiac oxygen use and may cause elevated serum levels of cardiac troponin (cTn). In this study, we aimed to evaluate whether elevated cTnI has clinical significance in patients with ANVUGIB.Methods: A total of 62 patients diagnosed with ANVUGIB whose serum cTnI levels were studied at the time of admission and follow-up in our clinic from January 2015 to January 2016 were included in the study. Patients with acute cardiac diseases that may cause elevated cTn were excluded from the study.Results: Forty-three of the patients were male (69.4%), and the mean age of all patients was 71.52 +/- 13.30 years. The mean cTnI level was 0.042 +/- 0.097 in all patients, with cTnI levels higher than the reference value in nine (14.5%) patients. In logistic regression analysis, the factors found to contribute to cTnI were tachycardia, chronic kidney disease, and coronary artery disease. In receiver operating characteristic analysis, cutoff values of 0.025 and 6.5 were found for cTnI and the Rockall score, respectively. In addition, cTnI and the Rockall score were shown to affect survival [log-rank (Mantel-Cox) test: p=0.011; log-rank (Mantel-Cox) test: p=0.014; respectively].Conclusion: We believe that serum cTnI levels studied during the first admission will be found useful as a biomarker in addition to the other existing risk determination systems, in order to identify patients at risk, even if findings of acute coronary syndrome are not observed in patients presenting with ANVUGIB.