- All patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding (blood in the upper gastrointestinal tract) of a magnitude that required 2 or more units of blood transfusion and entered the emergency room directly, or were referred from an area hospital, or developed bleeding while in the hospital, and were shown to have cirrhosis of the liver, and were shown by endoscopy to have bleeding gastric varices, absence of bleeding from esophageal varices, and absence of any other lesion that could reasonably account for the bleeding were included ("all comers").