Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Endosc. Jul 16, 2022; 14(7): 416-423
Published online Jul 16, 2022. doi: 10.4253/wjge.v14.i7.416
Safety of endoscopy in patients undergoing treatments with antiangiogenic agents: A 5-year retrospective review
Mohammad Azam, Amit Hudgi, Pearl Princess Uy, Jinal Makhija, John Erikson L Yap
Mohammad Azam, Amit Hudgi, Department of Internal Medicine, Medical College of Georgia/Augusta University, Augusta, GA 30912, United States
Pearl Princess Uy, John Erikson L Yap, Division of Gastroenterology, Medical College of Georgia/Augusta University, Augusta, GA 30912, United States
Jinal Makhija, Department of Internal Medicine, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL 60612, United States
Author contributions: Azam MU and Hudgi AR performed the research, collected the data, wrote the paper, contributed to analysis and reviewed the article; Uy P collected the data and reviewed the article; Makhija J performed the formal analysis; Yap JE conceptualized, supervised the report and approved the final draft submitted.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Augusta University Medical Centre.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data that were obtained after each patient agreed to treatment by written consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: The technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset are available from the corresponding author at jyap@augusta.edu. Consent was not obtained as this was a retrospective study. No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: John Erikson L Yap, MD, Assistant Professor, Division of Gastroenterology, Medical College of Georgia/Augusta University, 1120 15th Street, Augusta, GA 30912, United States. jyap@augusta.edu
Received: February 28, 2022
Peer-review started: February 28, 2022
First decision: April 13, 2022
Revised: May 8, 2022
Accepted: June 15, 2022
Article in press: June 15, 2022
Published online: July 16, 2022
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

High-grade bleeding and perforation are some of the side effects of antiangiogenic agents. The safety of endoscopy in patients receiving this therapy is unknown. Here we attempt to explore the incidence of bleeding, perforation, and mortality in our single centered study.

Research motivation

With the increased survival rate of cancer patients with newer chemotherapy, more patients would require endoscopic procedures for further surveillance and screening. It is important to assess the safety of endoscopic procedures among patients receiving therapy such as antiangiogenic agents who are at higher risk for bleeding and perforation.

Research objectives

To understand the risk of endoscopy in patients on antiangiogenic agents.

Research methods

We performed a retrospective analysis of patients, on antiangiogenic agents, who were admitted to the hospital at our institute. We used simple descriptive statistics to primarily assess mortality within 30 d of the procedure along with the incidence of bleeding and perforation.

Research results

We found no procedure-related adverse events in our small population study among the patients receiving antiangiogenic agents. These results need to be further confirmed in a multicentric larger population group.

Research conclusions

Our study reveals that endoscopic procedures are safe in patients receiving antiangiogenic agents. It affirms to not delay emergent or urgent endoscopic procedures among this population.

Research perspectives

Future research should be carried out in a multicentric and larger group of the population than the one in this study to further assess the safety of the endoscopic procedure among this population group.