H2 antagonists in the treatment of upper gastrointestinal bleeding.

It is plausible that, for pharmacologic and physiologic reasons, antisecretory treatment reduces the chances of rebleeding from gastric and duodenal ulcers and thereby reduces operation and death rates. Currently available evidence is not strong enough to confirm this, in part because trials have been too small to detect any differences present, and perhaps in part because drug doses have been too low to achieve the desired antisecretory potential.