- Patients presenting with acute esophageal variceal bleeding proven by emergency endoscopy within 12 hours. (Acute esophageal variceal bleeding was defined as: (1) when blood was directly seen by endoscopy to issue from an esophageal varix (active bleeding), or (2) when patients presented with red color signs on their esophageal varices with blood in esophagus or stomach and no other potential site of bleeding identified (inactive bleeding).