Low-Dose Aspirin Use Raises Risk for Major Bleeding

Low-dose aspirin use lowers risk for recurrent adverse cardiovascular (CV) events in patients with known CV disease. Its benefit for primary prevention of CV events, especially in low-risk patients (those with 10-year risk <10%), is less clear given the risk for complications, particularly major bleeding. In this Italian study, researchers used a population-based database to identify 186,425 patients (mean age, 69) who took low-dose aspirin (≤300 mg) daily for at least 75 days and matched them to the same number of control patients who had the same bleeding propensity and did not use aspirin.

During median follow-up of 5.7 years, 6907 episodes of major bleeding requiring hospitalization in aspirin and control patients occurred; about two thi…