For many, taking a daily aspirin to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke is a common practice. A new study, however, has found that 11% of them should not be doing so.
Today, an article written by Nicholas Bakalar of the New York Times reports on the study….
Aspirin has well established benefits, but also carries the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding. The American Heart Association guidelines recommend daily aspirin for primary prevention in people with a 10-year cardiovascular risk of 10% or more. Other guidelines suggest the cut-off should be a risk of 6%. (You can assess your risk at the National Institutes of Health’s online risk calculator).
Researchers studied records of 68,808 patients taking aspirin for primary cardiovascular prevention in various kinds of medical practices between 2008 and 2011. They found that 7,972 of them, or 11.6%, were taking aspirin daily despite having a cardiovascular disease risk of less than 6%.
In some groups, inappropriate use was even more common. For example, 17% of women taking aspirin had less than a 6% risk. The study was published in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
“We need a discussion between the patient and the clinician to see that we’re not causing more harm than good,” said the senior author, Dr. Salim S.Virani, a cardiologist at Baylor College of Medicine. Because a lot of patients take aspirin, he added, the “public health risk could be high.”
nytimeshealth.com
January 13, 2015
Those are the signs for all types. The thing is that the test they’ll probably do is a spamil tap, where they take some fluid that surounds the spinal cord. If he has no meningitis, it should be crystal clear. If it’s opaque, he probably has it. That is the visual test.Then they’ll take it to the lab and do a white blood cell count. If it’s above a certain level it means that he has it.Finally, they try to figure out what kind he has by trying to grow cultures in vitro and aplying different types of antibiotics to it.There are two general type: viral and bacterial.If it’s viral, there’s not much to do except keep temperature and swelling under control and wait for the body to fight the virus, if it can. Unless the virus is of a type that the body can not fight, a proper and timely treatment should allow the patient to recover without permanent damage. It is vital that swelling and fever be kept down.The other type, the bacterial, should bee treated with antibiotics. In theory, you should use the antibiotic that is best suited for the specific bacteria, but that depends on the culture results which can take several days and not yield any results. (No results would theoretically mean it’s a virus). But the best is to start treatment imediately w/ a general antibiotic and see how it develops.About one year ago my daughter had this and was treated in this way. The culture never came thru but she responded well to the treatment and that’s what counts. She’s now one healty 4 yr old.personal experience