The article by Lorenz et al
1
brings awareness to the underuse of aspirin in both primary and secondary prevention
of cardiovascular disease; however, their analysis may overstate the magnitude of
the problem. Because aspirin is effective at decreasing the risk of acute myocardial
infarction, the prevalence of its antecedent use in a population of patients with
acute myocardial infarction will be lower than the true frequency of its use in the
community from which the cases came. To illustrate this, consider the extreme situation
in which a treatment is completely effective at preventing acute myocardial infarction.
The prevalence of use of such a treatment among a series of acute myocardial infarction
cases would be 0 by definition.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
- Patterns of aspirin use before hospitalization for acute myocardial infarction.Am J Cardiol. 2000; 86: 214-216
- Estimation of exposure prevalence in a population at risk using data from cases and an external estimate of the relative risk.Epidemiology. 1995; 6: 551-553
- Collaborative overview of randomised trials of antiplatelet therapy–I.Br Med J. 1994; 308: 81-106
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© 2000 Excerpta Medica Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
