A drug used to decrease stomach acid and prevent stress ulcers in critically ill patients increases the risk of ventilator-acquired pneumonia, according to researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, in the US.
The study, published in CHEST, compared treatment with two drugs that decrease stomach acid: ranitidine, marketed under the name Zantac, and pantoprazole, marketed under the name Protonix. Both drugs decrease stomach acid, but the newer pantoprazole is considered more powerful and has become the drug of choice in many hospitals. However, in the analysis of 834 patient charts, the researchers found that hospitalised cardiothoracic surgery patients treated with pantoprazole were three times more likely to develop pneumonia.
