Loading...
The risk for rebleeding in patients with nonvariceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding from high-risk lesions can be reduced by high-dose proton-pump inhibitor (PPI) therapy. Existing data also suggest that early PPI therapy decreases the prevalence of high-risk lesions at the time of endoscopy (JW Gastroenterol Apr 18 2007). Now, investigators have evaluated the relative cost-effectiveness of treating all patients with high-dose intravenous PPI therapy before endoscopy versus waiting until the time of endoscopy to determine the appropriate therapy (oral or IV, depending on the risk posed by the bleeding source).
Investigators developed a decision-analysis model using probabilities for high-risk lesions and rebleeding from the literature. Cost…