Aspirin every day - good for anybody?

On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 15:51:41 -0800, Steve <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

I'm male, age 55, never had a heart attack, and have none
of the risk factors. But my internist still recommends
that I take a baby aspirin every day. Is this one of those
"can't hurt, might help" situations? Is there evidence
that any person over X age can benefit from taking aspirin
every day?

There have been many studies that show cardiovascular
benefit of aspirin in primary prevention, but that has to be
weighed against possible increased bleeding complications

For example:

heart.bmjjournals.com265Open ↗
maxtoshow=

L.

Quoted message said:

heart.bmjjournals.com265Open ↗

I don't understand what they mean by the risk factors >1.5%
ASA is recommended but risk 1% or less it is not. Could this
be explained in layman's terms?

Plus there was a study about a year ago showing uncoated ASA
to provide the statistical benefit that had been previously
reported, but that enteric coated ASA was surprisingly
ineffective. Anything more recent on this?

My family doctor is in the dark on this one and is still
recommending enteric ASA. I discussed this with a gastro
surgeon and he was non committal. He said the risk of
stomach ulcers increases with uncoated, but the protection
from heart attack is also better. he seemed to imply that if
you could tolerate uncoated it might be better, but as I
said he was non committal.

I switched back to uncoated 325mg after that but have always
wondered if there was any consensus on this matter.

"George" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

heart.bmjjournals.com2Open ↗
65?maxtoshow=

I don't understand what they mean by the risk factors

Quoted message said:

1.5% ASA is recommended but risk 1% or less it is not.

Could this be explained in layman's terms?

I think what they mean is that if you have a risk of greater
than 1.5%/year of having an MI than you should take ASA and
less than 1% than you should not. (Whether this is correct
or not, I don't know.) The risk is based on the typical risk
factors - LDL, age, previous MI, etc. I'm not sure what
procedure they used to quantify it.

Bill

Quoted message said:

Plus there was a study about a year ago showing uncoated
ASA to provide the statistical benefit that had been
previously reported, but that enteric coated ASA was
surprisingly ineffective. Anything more recent on this?

My family doctor is in the dark on this one and is still
recommending enteric ASA. I discussed this with a gastro
surgeon and he was non committal. He said the risk of
stomach ulcers increases with uncoated, but the protection
from heart attack is also better. he seemed to imply that
if you could tolerate uncoated it might be better, but as
I said he was non committal.

I switched back to uncoated 325mg after that but have
always wondered if there was any consensus on this matter.