Aspirin Therapy Linked To Bleeding

[Gerry]

This article appeared in the Australian press this weekend :-

"Even very low doses of aspirin designed to prevent stroke and heart attack can cause life-threatening stomach bleeding, a Sydney study says.
The world first study looked at all patients admitted to Sydney's Prince of Wales Hospital with gastrointestinal bleeding during three six-month periods between 1999 and 2001.
It found that where any drug was implicated, low-dose aspirin was consistently the likeliest culprit ahead of anti-inflammatory drugs, which are more often blamed.
All 120 patients eventually recovered but many had to have transfusions, adrenaline shots or surgery to stem the bleeding.
The hospital's chairman of rheumatology, Jim Bertouch, said the results indicated that the preventative aspirin dose most commonly used in Australia, a single daily tablet of 100-150 mg, may be too high. He recommended doses of 75 mg."

Interesting. Might be worth a question when next we visit our doctor.

Gerry

 

[Jennie]

Hi Gerry,

I had never thought about the long-term effects of apirin until it was mentioned on this site. Just never occured to me, I've never been an aspirin user. Here in the US, our "children's aspirin" is 81 mg, which is what I'm taking, possibly for the duration of my homograph. Bayer (and maybe other brands) has an "Enteric" safety-coated version that is also delayed-release, that is "designed to dissolve in the small intestine, not in the stomach", which they recommend for aspirin regimen use. I'm wondering, though, if it's bad for the stomach, how do we know it won't be bad for the small intestine??

Interesting to hear about this, though. Thanks for the posting.

-JEnnie