Although stress ulcer is a complication that can cause significant mortality and morbidity in critical patients with risk factors, there is still lack of consensus about its prophylaxis. There are also few data available from Taiwan. H2 blockers are commonly used due to convenience. Some prefer sucralfate (a mucosal protective agent) for the sake of less association with nosocomial pneumonia. Recently, proton pump inhibitors were shown to have good prophylactic effects for stress ulcer. Pantoprazole (iv) is the first intravenous form of proton pump inhibitor that was approved by FDA. There are some reports about its application for treatment of peptic ulcer bleeding. It also has good acid suppression effect in patients under critical care. We expect that intravenous pantoprazole will have a role in stress ulcer prophylaxis.

We will enroll those patients that have received major abdominal surgery and admitted to surgical ICU. After obtaining the consent, we will give them prophylactic drugs for 7 days within 24 hours. They are randomly allocated to 2 groups. Group I: pantoprazole 40 mg iv bolus stat and then qd ; Group II: famotidine 20 mg iv bolus stat and then q12h. We will monitor the following data: operation type & time, APACHE II score, CBC, CXR, stool character and OB test, NG aspirate. If clinical evidence of UGI bleeding occurs, endoscopic examination will be performed. We define the end point as overt bleeding, death or transfer out of ICU. We will compare the prevalence of UGI bleeding and ventilator associated pneumonia in these 2 groups