Should I Stop My Aspirin?

Recent opinions in medical journals have suggested that taking an aspirin for your heart’s sake is not only unhelpful, but if you’re over 70 it may be downright risky. There’s no doubt that daily aspirin has benefits, but the potential side effects may exceed the benefit in some people. It’s true that aspirin seems to have different effects in men and women – it reduces heart attacks in men, in women it reduces stroke – and the risk:benefit ratio may well be different for men and women. Whether to start a daily aspirin regimen is something for you and your doctor to decide.

It’s a different matter when it comes to stopping aspirin. If you’ve been taking a daily dose for a number of months or years, stopping may precipitate an increased risk of stroke. Swiss physicians compared the history of over 300 patients who had a stroke, and compared them with 300 carefully matched control subjects –people of the same age, gender, and so on – who hadn’t had a stroke. Thirteen stroke patients and four controls had stopped their daily aspirin in the previous 4 weeks. The average interval between stopping aspirin and having a stroke was 9½ days.

It was interesting that, of those who stopped aspirin, 7 had done so because of their doctor’s advice, 5 had decided themselves to stop because of bleeding, and 5 just stopped for no apparent reason.

This study results reinforces the idea that, if you are on aspirin, you should contact your doctor if you have any bleeding or stomach irritation, and only stop the aspirin after this consultation. Otherwise, just keep on taking it – it may be doing you good, and is obviously not doing you as much harm as stopping suddenly might do. . .