[Comment] The benefits of aspirin in early secondary stroke prevention

Aspirin is considered an affordable and widely available, if only modestly effective, thromboprophylactic for secondary stroke prevention. The two large randomised controlled trials of aspirin in acute ischaemic stroke reported that aspirin reduced the odds of early recurrent stroke at 2 –4 weeks by about 12% (odds ratio [OR] 0·88, 95% CI 0·79–0·97) and the odds of death or dependency at the end of follow-up by about 5% (OR 0·95, 0·91–0·99).1 The ten trials of aspirin for long-term secondary prevention in patients with previous transient ischaemic attack (TIA) or ischaem ic stroke reported that aspirin reduced the risk of any recurrent stroke over 3 years by about 17% (relative risk [RR] 0·83, 95% CI 0·72–0·96).
Source: LANCET - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Comment Source Type: research