Which Hospital Patients Need Drugs to Prevent Gastrointestinal
Bleeding? THURSDAY Jan. 10, 2013 -- Researchers have developed a
scoring system to help doctors determine which hospital patients
can be prescribed stomach acid-suppressing drugs to prevent
gastrointestinal bleeding and which patients should not be given
such medications. Gastrointestinal bleeding in hospital patients
is rare, but it is dangerous and potentially fatal, according to
the study authors. Although the use of acid suppressants to
prevent gastrointestinal bleeding in patients who are not
critically ill is not widely recommended, the medications are
commonly used for this purpose, said Shoshana Herzig and
colleagues at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in
Boston. The study was published online recently in the Journal
of General Internal Medicine. The researchers analyzed data from
more than 75,000 hospital patients admitted over three years and
found that gastrointestinal bleeding occurred in about 200 of
them, according to a journ