Guidelines from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence are set to recommend other drugs instead for patients with an irregular heartbeat, called atrial fibrillation. Warfarin or similar blood-thinning medicine is best, says NICE in draft advice to be finalised this month.
The advice will affect hundreds of thousands of patients.
Patients who are unclear on whether or not they should continue to take aspirin should speak to their doctor”
But experts say most doctors already follow the advice to prescribe blood-thinners other than aspirin and that the guidelines are “playing catch-up” – this is the first time they will have been updated since they were first issued in 2006.
Atrial fibrillation is the most common heart rhythm problem, affecting up to 800,000 people – roughly one in 100 – in the UK.
In AF, the heart cannot work as well as it should and blood clots can form, which, in turn, increases the risk of a stroke.
Aspirin has been used for years to help protect patients from strokes, but mounting evidence suggests the drug’s benefits are too small compared with other treatments.
The NICE guidelines for England and Wales look set to say that although daily aspirin might still be beneficial for some patients, most should be offered something else as well or instead.
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