An article appearing in last week's issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine confirms that taking aspirin significantly reduces the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death in patients with increased risk for coronary artery disease.
Investigators combined data from five major randomized trials to reach this conclusion. They demonstrated that, in patients whose 10-year risk of developing heart disease is 10% or higher, taking aspirin reduced the risk of having a first heart attack by 32%, and the combined risk of heart attack, stroke and vascular death by 15%.
Further, the study reports that more than half the patients in these trials who should have been taking aspirin were not doing so.
The authors point out that according to their data, if doctors made more appropriate recommendations for aspirin therapy over 10,000 premature deaths and 100,000 first heart attacks could be avoided each year in the U.S. alone.
Unfortunately, it is well established that doctors fall short in recognizing healthy patients whose risk is intermediate or high, and frequently miss the opportunity to recommend well-established therapies - like aspirin - that significantly reduce that risk.
