Medication A
- About The Medication:
- It’s an infusion (a nurse must get the medicine, program a pump to give the medicine slowly over a period of time, and connect it to the patient).
- It costs $3000 per dose.
- The Numbers:
- 5 trials have been done on this drug, totaling 1500 patients.
- 2 trials showed a benefit.
- 3 trials did not show a benefit.
- When the trial numbers are put together, overall, there was no benefit found.
- There are no known harms to giving the medication.
Which rating would you assign?
Medication A is Actually:
Proton Pump Inhibitors for Upper-GI Bleeding (like Nexium or Protonix). We gave it a Red rating. Here’s why:
According to our review, there was no benefit on any patient-important outcomes, like death, bleeding requiring transfusion, repeat bleeding, or need for surgery. This medicine is not cheap, and with 1500 patients, we think it’s a big enough sample to find a benefit in–if one exists.
