Guts UK-funded study makes top 30 most read UEGJ papers ever!

A Guts UK-funded gastroenterology study has made it into the top 30 most read United European Gastroenterology Journal (UEGJ) articles ever, in just three weeks!

The paper explores whether patients who end up in hospital with an acute upper gastrointestinal bleed, or AUGIB (bleeding from their gullet or stomach) received the correct care. National quality standards of care state that these patients need to be sent for an endoscopy within 24 hours of being admitted to hospital. This is important to ensure patients receive the correct treatment and in some cases to save lives. However, this paper flagged up that most hospitals that were investigated did not meet this national standard.

A team of trainee doctors in the medical specialty of gastroenterology carried an audit in hospitals throughout the East and West Midlands. The trainee doctors enrolled patients with suspected upper GI bleed into their study over 30 days and reviewed the time taken from when the patient first arrived in hospital to the start time of an endoscopy procedure. This trainee-led audit identified various reasons why hospitals were not managing to send patients to endoscopy within the expected 24 hours and have flagged up ways to improve this outcome. The paper authors note that:

‘Moving forward, the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) Endoscopy Quality Improvement Project comprises a series of initiatives to improve standards of care in endoscopy. Amongst these is the development of a national AUGIB quality bundle, which can be implemented in acute departments to facilitate early management, risk stratification and referral, with the objective of improving time to endoscopy and patient outcomes. Such interventions may ultimately pave way for the attainment of quality standards in AUGIB.’

Guts UK funds small grants in collaboration with the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) to support groups of trainee doctors (trainee networks). These trainee networks come together to tackle an important challenge in clinical practice. In 2017 Guts UK awarded a grant to Dr Richard Ingram, Dr Keith Siau and their collaborators throughout the Midlands to improve the care of patients with gastrointestinal bleeding.