Bleeding ulcer symptoms should not be ignored because they could be fatal. It could be a life-saving gift if you know hot to detect the signs and symptoms of a bleeding ulcer. You may not even know that you have an ulcer because you do not feel or experience pain. There is no pain because in this case, your blood neutralizes the acid in the stomach around the area of the ulcer, thus the acid will not ‘burn’ the raw areas around the ulcer causing no pain.
If there is no stomach pain, you may think that your ulcer has been cured but in reality it could be the opposite. Your ulcer may be bleeding seriously and has turned worse. When stomach ulcers are exposed to gastric acid, you could experience stomach pain but when an ulcer starts to bleed your blood will reduce the effect of your stomach acids and you would feel normal. This is why it is very important to know bleeding ulcer symptoms because they could be lethal.
Bleeding ulcer symptoms include the following:
- Black, tarry stools with foul smell could be the first symptom of bleeding of gastric ulcer or duodenal ulcer.
- Your stool has dark red blood.
- There are repeated and different signs of bleeding if the ulcer is already in the advanced stage.
- When there is vomiting of blood. If the blood is of dark color, it means that this is old blood.
- Due to blood loss, you may feel faint and dizzy when standing up. You may become anemic and feel weak, dizzy or tired due to a slow bleed left untreated.
The muscles of the stomach or duodenal wall can start to erode as an ulcer becomes bigger. Bleeding may start when the blood vessels are damaged. If the blood vessels that are damaged are small, the blood flow is slow and will often find its way into your digestive tract. However if the damaged blood vessel is large, it is very dangerous because the bleeding is fast. If the ulcer has worn all the way through the lining of the stomach and into a large blood vessel, blood transfusions and emergency surgery may be needed. Bleeding ulcer symptoms could cause death of a person if not immediately treated.