Invited Commentaries Commentary: risk factors for gastrointestinal bleeding in NSAID users

摘要

The world of anti-inflammatory drugs is a strange one. Non-selective non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) kill over a thousand patients, annually through upper gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding.1 Selective cyclooxy-genase (COX)-2 inhibitors should have replaced NSAIDs on formularies because they lack this toxicity, cause no more cardiovascular harm than NSAIDs,2 and indeed lack the ability of NSAIDs to abrogate the benefits of aspirin.3 However, their use is actively discouraged.