By Ted Bosworth
Intravenous azithromycin is a viable substitute for erythromycin to cleanse the visual field during endoscopic treatment of gastrointestinal bleeding, and it also may have a few advantages, researchers have found.
Although IV erythromycin is an effective gastric lavage for improving the endoscopic treatment of GI bleeding, preparing the solution is time-consuming—taking roughly an hour, compared with about five minutes for IV azithromycin, said Danny Issa, MD, a GI fellow at