Saturday, April 20, 2013

Aspirin: should we add it to our pneumonia order sets?

It has been known for a while now that pneumonia is a short term risk factor for acute coronary syndrome. So it recently occurred to some investigators to see if adding an aspirin a day to the regimens of pneumonia patients would help. The results were startling:

..the rates of ACS at 1 month were 1.1% (n=1) in the aspirin group and 10.6% (n=10) in the control group (relative risk, 0.103; 95% confidence interval 0.005–0.746; P=0.015). Aspirin therapy was associated with a 9% absolute reduction in the risk for ACS. There was no significant decrease in the risk of death from any cause (P=0.151), but the aspirin group had a decreased risk of cardiovascular death (risk reduction: 0.04, P=0.044).

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