Daily Aspirin Wards Off Cancer in Barrett's Esophagus - CME Teaching Brief - MedPage Today
By Peggy Peck, Managing Editor, MedPage Today
Reviewed by Rubeen K. Israni, M.D., Fellow, Renal-Electrolyte and Hypertension Division, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
November 07, 2005
MedPage Today Action Points
* Advise Barrett's patients that it is too preliminary to recommend NSAIDs as prevention for esophageal cancer.
* Explain to patients who ask about NSAID use that the drugs may increase risk of gastrointestinal bleeding and long-term NSAID use may increase the risk of cardiovascular events.
Review
SEATTLE, Nov. 7 - Patients with Barrett's esophagus who regularly take nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) reduce their risk of neoplastic progression by 68% compared with Barrett's patients who never use NSAIDs, according to researchers here.
A prospective study of 350 patients with Barrett's found that the hazard ratio for neoplastic progression to adenocarcinoma was 0.32 (95% CI, 0.14-0.76) but dropped to 0.20 (0.10-0.41) for patients who were NSAID users at baseline and continued during five years of follow-up.
The hazard ratio among former NSAID users was 0.70 (95% CI 0.31-1.58), epidemiologist Thomas Vaughan, M.D., M.P.H., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center here reported online today in Lancet Oncology. NSAID-users also had lower risk of aneuploidy and tetraploidy compared with never- users.
Posted by gruwell at November 8, 2005 5:06 AM | TrackBack