Purpose: H. pylori eradication has revolutionized the management of peptic ulcer disease. A second major revolution occurred when COX-2 selective inhibitors were introduced in 1999 with a GI safety advantage. We assessed the impact of COX-2 selective inhibitor use by examining trends of hospitalizations due to complicated gastric (GU) and duodenal ulcers (DU) over a period of 11 years and relating them to the total prescriptions of NSAIDs, H. pylori eradication, and PPI use. Methods: The Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) is a stratified random sample of US community hospitals with information on all inpatient care regardless of insurance status. We studied all inpatient hospitalizations in NIS from 1990 to 2001 with a primary diagnosis of complicated GU, DU, or peptic ulcer disease (PUD) with hemorrhage, perforation, and/or obstruction, and analyzed them as a proportion of total NSAID prescriptions (data from IMS) during the same time. Results: From 1990–2001 there were 423,558,416 hospitalizations in 3.2 billion person-years of observation. Of these, 1,865,687 hospitalizations (0.44% of total) were for a primary diagnosis of a complicated GU, DU, or PUD (58.4 per 100,000 US population). During this time, there were 982.2 million NSAID prescriptions in the US. Annual NSAID prescriptions increased from 67.6 million (1990) to 112.8 million (2001), with the largest increase from 1998 (79.2 million) to 2001 (112.8 million). PPI prescriptions rose from 3.9 million in 1992 to 73.6 million in 2001. Complicated GU, DU, or PUD hospitalizations declined from 163,173 in 1990 to 139,597 in 2001. The rate of GU, DU or PUD hospitalizations per 100,000 NSAID prescriptions declined by almost 50%, from 241.5 in 1990 to 123.8 in 2001 (P < 0.0001). While such hospitalizations declined steadily from 1992 (perhaps reflecting PPI use), there were 2 periods of additional sharp declines: the first (10.8%, 1995) following the NIH consensus conference recommending H. pylori eradication, and the second (22.4%, 1999) after the introduction of COX-2 selective inhibitors. Conclusions: These data strongly suggest that the introduction of H. pylori eradication therapy, increasing use of PPIs and the introduction of COX-2 selective inhibitors account for the trend toward fewer hospitalizations for complicated ulcer disease in the US. The impact of COX-2 selective agents on ulcer hospitalizations and mortality is twice as much as that of H. pylori eradication.
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