Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Surg. Jul 27, 2016; 8(7): 501-507
Published online Jul 27, 2016. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v8.i7.501
Aspirin use for primary prophylaxis: Adverse outcomes in non-variceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding
Karina M Souk, Hani M Tamim, Hussein A Abu Daya, Don C Rockey, Kassem A Barada
Karina M Souk, Hani M Tamim, Department of Internal Medicine, American University of Beirut-Medical Center, Beirut 11072020, Lebanon
Hani M Tamim, Biostatistics Support Unit, Clinical Research Institute, American University of Beirut-Medical Center, Beirut 11072020, Lebanon
Hussein A Abu Daya, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States
Don C Rockey, Department of Internal Medicine, the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, United States
Kassem A Barada, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, American University of Beirut-Medical Center, Beirut 11072020, Lebanon
Author contributions: All authors contributed to this manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: AUBMC, IRB ID: IM.KB.09.
Informed consent statement: The IRB gave the approval to this study, and at that time they didn’t ask for informed consent because it was a retrospective study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the Authors have no conflict of interest related to the manuscript.
Data sharing statement: The original anonymous dataset is available on request from the corresponding author, Dr. Kassem A Barada at kb02@aub.edu.lb.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Kassem A Barada, MD, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, American University of Beirut-Medical Center, P.O. Box 11-0236 Riad El Solh, Beirut 11072020, Lebanon. kb02@aub.edu.lb
Telephone: +961-3-780909 Fax: +961-1-370814
Received: March 3, 2016
Peer-review started: March 4, 2016
First decision: April 6, 2016
Revised: April 21, 2016
Accepted: May 10, 2016
Article in press: May 11, 2016
Published online: July 27, 2016
Processing time: 130 Days and 18.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Aspirin is known to increase the risk of upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB), and it is customary to stop aspirin in patients presenting with gastrointestinal bleeding. Some studies have shown that being on aspirin is associated with better outcome in those patients. Our study compared clinical outcomes in patients who presented with non-variceal UGIB while taking aspirin for primary prophylaxis only to those of patients not taking aspirin. We found that patients taking aspirin had lower mortality and shorter hospital stay than patients not taking aspirin.