Incidence of gastrointestinal bleeding in Italy is similar to that in Britain

EDITOR,--I was interested in the paper on the audit of acute upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage in the United Kingdom.1 As current knowledge of the epidemiology of acute upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage comes from English speaking countries, I wish to draw attention to the results of a prospective, population based survey conducted in the Treviso area (north east Italy) a decade ago.2 Treviso hospital is a general hospital with 1264 beds serving a population of about 270000 inhabitants (232000 aged over 15). During 27 months, from 1 October 1983 to 31 …