Aspirin use in diabetics
This article was originally published in The Tan Sheet
Executive Summary
"A significant amount of work needs to be done to improve the adherence" of the American Diabetes Association's aspirin guidelines that the general diabetes mellitus (DM) population take aspirin as a prophylactic measure, Kenneth Nguyen, et al., Kansas City University of Medicine & Biosciences, report in the February Family Medicine. The retrospective analysis evaluated data from the 1997-2000 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey to see if patients with DM who were over age 30 and had one or more risk factors for cardiovascular events were adhering to ADA recommendations. Findings showed only 2.7% of patients received aspirin in 1997, 2.9% in 1998, 2.1% in 1999 and 5.7% in 2000. Usage rates fell short of the roughly 33% of patients who should have been recommended for aspirin therapy, Nguyen et al. note...