Aspirin can save cancer patients experiencing heart attack

The Hindu: Aspirin can prove to be a life saviour for cancer patients who have heart attacks, claims a new research. And, the medical decision to not give aspirin to cancer patients who have heart attacks (based on the premise it could cause lethal bleeding) is a deadly mistake, it says.

Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, however, say that notion is now proven wrong and that without aspirin, the majority of these patients will die.

They say that their study, turns common medical assumptions upside down and will likely change medical practice for cancer patients. Because aspirin can thin blood and cancer patients experience low platelet counts and abnormal clotting, physicians view aspirin as a relative contra-indication.

Given that blood platelets are responsible for the clotting process, physicians do not eagerly prescribe aspirin as a standard treatment.

The study to be published in the February 1, 2007 issue of the journal Cancer, found that 9 of 10 cancer patients with thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) who were experiencing a heart attack and who did not receive aspirin died, whereas only one patient died in a group of 17 similar cancer patients who received aspirin.

They also found aspirin helps cancer patients with normal platelet count survive heart attacks, just as it does for people without cancer.

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