A study showed that patients with coronary artery disease, such as angina pectoris or myocardial infarction, who had undergone coronary intervention more than a year ago did not have any major problems if they temporarily stopped taking aspirin during non-cardiac surgery such as cancer, teeth, knee, or hip surgery.
The team led by Professors Ahn Jeong-min and Kang Do-yoon from the Department of Cardiology at Asan Medical Center in Seoul studied 926 patients who had undergone drug-eluting coronary intervention for more than a year at 30 institutions in three countries, including Korea, India, and Turkey, from 2017 to 2024. It was revealed that this was the result of analyzing the effect of temporarily discontinuing aspirin before and after non-cardiac surgery.
Coronary artery intervention is a procedure that inserts a stent to widen the narrowed blood vessel when the coronary artery that supplies blood to the heart is narrowed or blocked. At this time, aspirin, an antiplatelet drug, is taken to prevent blood clots from forming in the area where the stent was inserted. Aspirin acts as a blood thinner, so it is recommended when undergoing surgery for other diseases such as tooth extraction, endoscopic treatment to remove polyps, or cancer surgery. Bleeding side effects may occur.
In this study, there was no significant difference in the incidence of major clinical events such as death, myocardial infarction, thrombosis, and stroke in the group that stopped taking antiplatelet drugs, including aspirin, 5 days ago compared to the group that continued to take them before and after non-cardiac surgery. Rather, bleeding decreased.
The incidence of major clinical events, such as death, myocardial infarction, thrombosis, and stroke, from 5 days before surgery to 30 days after surgery was 0.6% in the aspirin-taking group, and 0.9% in the aspirin-stopping group, with no statistically significant difference between the two groups.
Additionally, thrombosis did not occur in both groups and there was no difference in the incidence of major bleeding. However, minor bleeding occurred more frequently in the aspirin-taking group (14.9%) than in the aspirin-taking group (10.1%).
Ahn Jung-min, a cardiology professor at Asan Medical Center in Seoul, is treating a patient who has undergone coronary intervention surgery. Provided by Seoul Asan Medical Center
Professor Ahn said, “We obtained important research results showing that it is safe to temporarily stop taking aspirin in a situation where there are insufficient guidelines for taking aspirin when performing non-cardiac surgery on patients who have undergone drug-eluting coronary intervention.” “Rather than arbitrarily discontinuing medication, we hope that patients make the decision to discontinue medication after sufficient consultation with a specialist,” he said.
The results of this study were published in the latest issue of the international academic journal ‘Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC)’.
Reporter Jeong Jin-su jen@segye.com
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