A reliable cure for Helicobacter pylori infection?

Personal viewpoint A reliable cure for Helicobacter pylori infection?There are significant benefits to be gained by treating Helicobacter pylori infection, particularly in patients with peptic ulcer disease.Once a physician makes a decision to begin treatment, he/she immediately wants to know how.I am often asked which drugs and drug combinations are effective, how to draw conclusions from the treatment trials, and which protocols are best.One common question is 'How many drugs and for how many days'?While I do not believe that either 'how many' or 'how long' are important and they may not even be relevant, the answers are certainly controversial.The goal of treatment is simple, to cure the infection and not 'eradicate the patient'.Large multicentre clinical trials comparing treatments are virtually non- existent.The current recommendations are often based upon summary data put together by opinion leaders based upon information obtained from small clinical trials often published only in abstract form.We now have a number of regimens that will reliably cure most H pylori infections.Initially, we proposed that the clinicians use an 80% rule - that is, they would only choose treatments that had a success rate of at least 80%.1 Now, it seems we can move forward to a 90% rule.Terminology of treatments and results of therapy Anti-Hpylori treatments are called monotherapy, dual ther- apy, triple therapy, quadruple therapy, etc, based on the number of drugs given.We have come to recognise that the goals of anti-ulcer therapy include healing the ulcer and on July 18, 2023 by guest.