Impact of the stress ulcer prophylactic protocol on reducing the unnecessary administration of stress ulcer medications and gastrointestinal bleeding: a single-center, retrospective pre-post study

BACKGROUND: Clinically significant gastrointestinal bleeding from stress ulcers increases patient mortality in intensive care, and histamine type 2 receptor blockers and proton pump inhibitors as stress ulcer prophylaxes were reported to decrease the incidence of that. Although medical checklists are widely used to maintain high compliance with medications and interventions to improve patient outcome in the intensive care field, the efficacy of medical checklists regarding the incidence of gastrointestinal bleeding and the reduction of unnecessary administration of stress ulcer prophylaxis medications has not been sufficiently explored to date. This study aimed to investigate the incidence of gastrointestinal bleeding and the rate of administering stress ulcer prophylaxis medication before and after setting administration criteria for stress ulcer prophylaxis and introducing a medical checklist for critically ill adults. METHODS: This was a retrospective pre-post study at a single-center, tertiary adult and pediatric mixed ICU. Adult patients (≥ 18 years) who were admitted to the ICU for reasons other than gastrectomy, esophagectomy, pancreatoduodenectomy, and gastrointestinal bleeding were analyzed. A medical checklist and stress ulcer prophylaxis criteria were introduced on December 22, 2014, and the patients were classified into the preintervention group (from September to December 21, 2014) and the postintervention group (from December 22, 2014, to April 2015). The primary outcome was the incidence of upper gastrointestinal bleeding, and the secondary outcome was the proportion administered stress ulcer prophylaxis medications. RESULTS: One hundred adult patients were analyzed. The incidence of upper gastrointestinal bleeding in the pre- and postintervention groups was both 4.0% [95% confidence interval, 0.5–13.7%]. The proportion administered stress ulcer prophylaxis medications decreased from 100 to 38% between the pre- and post-intervention groups. CONCLUSIONS: After the checklist and the criteria were introduced, the administration of stress ulcer prophylaxis medications decreased without an increase in upper gastrointestinal bleeding in critically ill adults. Prospective studies are necessary to evaluate the causal relationship between the introduction of them and gastrointestinal adverse events in critically ill adults.