Reassessing the Use of Proton Pump Inhibitors and Histamine-2 Antagonists in Critically Ill Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Objective: To determine the associations of stress ulcer prophylaxis with gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding, nosocomial pneumonia (NP), mortality, and length of stay in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).

Study Design: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and observational studies in the English language assessing the effects of proton pump inhibitors and histamine-2 receptor antagonists on patients in the PICU published before October 2018 from the PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials databases. A random-effects Mantel-Haenszel risk difference (MHRD) model was used to pool all the selected studies for meta-analysis.