Stress ulcer prophylaxis demonstrated no impact on hospital mortality, rate of gastrointestinal bleeding, pneumonia, Clostridium difficile infection, and intensive care unit length of stay in critically ill adult people with sepsis who have potential risk factors for gastrointestinal bleeding.

This retrospective cohort study aimed to assess the effects of stress ulcer prophylaxis versus no prophylaxis on patient outcomes in sepsis people at risk for gastrointestinal bleeding.

Using data from Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III database, a comparison was made between people who were given stress ulcer prophylaxis with proton pump inhibitors or histamine-2 receptor antagonists for ≥three days and people who were given no prophylaxis. For making comparisons between the study groups with equivalent distributions of study variables, propensity score matching was carried out. In-hospital mortality was the major endpoint.

Overall, 7,744 participants were incorporated with 6,656 (86.0%) participants in the stress ulcer prophylaxis group and 1,088 (14.0%) participants in the non-stress ulcer prophylaxis group. A 1:1 propensity score matching created 866 participants in each cohort. In terms of in-hospital mortality, gastrointestinal bleeding, pneumonia, Clostridium difficile infection, or intensive care unit length of stay, there were no profound inter-group differences, as shown in Table 1:

Stress ulcer prophylaxis does not seem to be beneficial for sepsis patients at risk of gastrointestinal bleeding.