Healthcare

The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) is the drugs that have ability to relieve mild to moderate pain or known as antipyretic, and relieves pain without blocking the condition of nerve impulses both acts as opioids (act on receptors in the brain to inhibit pain impulses) or non-opioids (inhibit the synthesis of prostaglandins) or known as analgesic.

Despite its benefits and current side effects of NSAID drugs, a new study from French found that those patients with severe lower respiratory tract infection, early treatment with NSAIDs may worsen in the pneumonia outcomes.

According to current findings, compared to patients with community-acquired pneumonia treated with no NSAID, those treated with NSAID were 5 times likely to develop pleural empyema or lung cavitation.

This findings based on studied among 90 consecutive patients in the Tenon Hospital in Paris between 2002 and 2006 that were admitted to the intensive care unit or its affiliated step-down unit.

The study authors, Dr. Muriel Fartoukh from that hospital and colleagues reported in Chest archive as February issue that patients in the NSAID group tended to have lower severity of diseases upon admission, based on lower Simplified Acute Physiologic Score (SAPS) II and Sepsis-related Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score.

However, they had a higher prevalence of chest pain and pleural syndrome, as well as multilobar infiltrates and pleural effusions on X-rays.

In this study, most pneumonia causes included Streptococcus pneumoniae, legionella, pseudomonas aeruginosa, and polymicrobial.

Overall, the authors write, “these findings suggest that NSAID use at early stage of community-acquired pneumonia can be associated with a less-effective compartmentalization of infection, but a blunted systemic response, which may result in delayed diagnosis and management, and a protracted course.”

They suggest that the higher complication rate may have resulted from the longer delay to hospital referral.