Nine years of maintenance treatment with ranitidine for patients with duodenal ulcer disease.

Four hundred and sixty-four patients with duodenal ulcer disease received continuous maintenance treatment with ranitidine for up to 9 years. Treatment failure was defined as either the first symptomatic recurrence of ulcer or the first ulcer recurrence accompanied by haemorrhage. Life tables were constructed using the Kaplan-Meier product-limit method; comparisons of survival curves were performed using the log-rank test; and multivariate analysis was carried out using the Cox proportional hazards model. Results. The proportion of patients remaining free from symptomatic recurrence of ulcer during maintenance treatment with either 150 mg/day or 300 mg/day ranitidine was: 95% at 1 year; 88% at 3 years; 86% at 5 years; and 81% at 7 and 9 years (95% C.I. 76-86%). Young age and the absence of exposure to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) at the time of diagnosis of ulcer were shown to increase the likelihood of developing ulcer recurrence. The rate of ulcer recurrence after 9 years of maintenance treatment (17%) was significantly less than that after 5 years without active anti-ulcer therapy (80%), P = 0.0001. The proportion of patients who remained free from ulcer haemorrhage during maintenance treatment was: 99.1% at 1 year and 98.1% at 5 and 9 years (95% C.I. 96.7-99.6%). The risk of haemorrhage was significantly greater in patients who were not receiving active treatment (12.4% at 5 years) than in patients receiving maintenance treatment (less than 2% at 9 years), P = 0.0001 (log-rank test). Patients who had originally presented with haemorrhage had an increased risk of further ulcer bleeding compared with patients who presented with pain (P = 0.0013). A significantly greater proportion of patients with NSAID-associated duodenal ulcers remained free from ulcer recurrence during maintenance treatment compared with patients suffering from 'idiopathic' ulcers (P = 0.0238), although there was no difference between the two groups in respect of haemorrhage during maintenance treatment. Conclusions. (a) Continuous maintenance treatment with ranitidine for up to nine years successfully prevents ulcer recurrence in more than 80% of patients with duodenal ulcer disease. (b) Young age increases the risk of ulcer recurrence during maintenance treatment with ranitidine. Ulcers associated with NSAID-intake at the time of diagnosis have a lesser risk of recurrence during maintenance treatment. (c) The risk of haemorrhage in patients with ulcer disease receiving maintenance treatment with ranitidine for nine years was less than 2% compared with greater than 12% in untreated patients observed for 5 years.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)