Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.
For many years, doctors have been prescribing aspirin therapy as a cheap, effective way to reduce cardiovascular events and improve survival after a heart attack. Neither of these is true.Even low dose aspirin therapy has serious side effects that, just like statin drugs for cholesterol, overshadow any supposed benefit. The evidence in support of aspirin has always been weak, and over the last decade it has become even weaker.
The benefit purported by medicine for taking aspirin is that of its antiplatelet activity. They say that it helps save lives by reducing deaths from heart attacks.