Sengstaken–Blakemore tube
Medical device
A Sengstaken–Blakemore tube is a medical device inserted through the nose or mouth and used occasionally in the management of upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage due to esophageal varices (distended and fragile veins in the esophageal wall, usually a result of cirrhosis). The use of the tube was originally described in 1950, although similar approaches to bleeding varices were described by Westphal in 1930. With the advent of modern endoscopic techniques which can rapidly and definitively control variceal bleeding, Sengstaken–Blakemore tubes are rarely used at present.
Device
The device consists of a flexible plastic tube containing several internal channels and two inflatable balloons. Apart from the balloons, the tube has an opening at the bottom (gastric tip) of the device. More modern models also have an opening near the upper esophagus; such devices are properly termed Minnesota tubes. The tube is passed down into the esophagus and the gastric balloon is inflated inside the stomach. A traction of 1 kg is applied to the tube so that the gastric balloon will compress the gastroesophageal junction and reduce the blood flow to esophageal varices. If the use of traction alone cannot stop the bleeding, the esophageal balloon is also inflated to help stop the bleeding. The esophageal balloon should not remain inflated for more than six hours, to avoid necrosis.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1418656. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1950 and 1930.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sengstaken–Blakemore tube” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.