Aim: To determine whether patients with ischemic heart disease (IHD) are at higher risk for peptic ulcer (PU).
Material and methods: We performed a case-control study. The patients were selected by simple random sampling of clinical histories.
Cases: 310 patients with IHD (angina pectoris, myocardial infarct or both).
Controls: 310 patients without IHD, paired by age, sex and tobacco consumption. Data were obtained by review of the patients' clinical histories. Response variable: diagnosis of peptic ulcer by endoscopy, esophagogastroduodenal transit or surgery. The odds ratio (OR) was determined by logistic regression, adjusting for the effect of confounding variables and risk for PU.
Results: The mean age of the patients was 72.7 years (SD 8.6) and 70% were men. PU was found in 18.7% of the patients and in 12.3% of the controls with an adjusted OR of 1.77 (95% CI: 1.12-2.77; p = 0.01). This effect was produced at the expense of duodenal ulcer with an adjusted OR of 2.22 (95% CI: 1.29-3.74; p = 0.003). The adjusted OR of gastric ulcer was 1.13 (95% CI: 0.45-2.82; p = 0.8).
Conclusions: After adjusting for the effect of confounding variables and risk factors for the development of PU, this disease was more frequent in the group of patients with IHD.