Many Heart Patients Still Don't Take Aspirin
Mon Jun 3, 5:35 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Aspirin and other clot-preventing drugs are well known to help prevent heart attacks in people with heart disease, but many patients don't take these drugs, researchers report.
Patients who are unable to tolerate aspirin--for example because it irritates their stomach--may be able to take another drug with similar effects, according to study findings published in the May issue of The American Journal of Cardiology.
In the study, Dr. Nancy M. Allen LaPointe and colleagues from the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina surveyed a subset of more than 16,000 patients who had undergone a cardiac procedure at Duke University.
About two thirds of the nearly 3,000 patients surveyed returned a completed survey. Based on those responses, the researchers estimated that in all 16,000 patients, 85% used aspirin after leaving the hospital and 15% did not.
Of the nonusers, 6% of the overall population were eligible for but not taking aspirin or similar types of drugs. Such drugs decrease the "stickiness" of platelets, a key cell in blood clot formation.
Among eligible patients who were not taking aspirin routinely, 50% said that they had never been advised by their physicians to take aspirin, 21% said that they had been told to do so, and 29% said that their physicians had told them to stop taking aspirin.
"Our study suggests a substantial potential for reducing the number of vascular events in the more than 12 million patients with coronary artery disease in the United States alone by providing antiplatelet therapy to those able to use it," LaPointe and colleagues conclude. |
