Cost, benefits and unintended gastrointestinal side effects of pharmaceutical therapy.

All healthcare services, however beneficial, carry inherent risks in addition to the costs of care, which may involve expenditures on unanticipated side effects. Substantial research over the past few decades has elucidated the full range of clinical and resource use effects of peptic ulcer medications, particularly for histamine H 2-receptor antagonists and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-related gastropathy. Less well known are some of the positive and negative side effects of many different types of pharmaceuticals on the gastrointestinal tract. This paper summarises information on unintended and unexpected positive and negative gastrointestinal side effects of medications administered to treat gastrointestinal and other diseases. It further analyses 2 drug classes and their effects on the gastrointestinal tract, histamine H 2-receptor antagonists, which have a positive impact on clinical effects and resource use, and NSAIDs, which have negative effects.