Antiplatelet drug

This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Antiplatelet drug is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:

An antiplatelet drug is a member of a class of pharmaceuticals that decreases platelet aggregation[1] and inhibits thrombus formation. They are effective in the arterial circulation, where anticoagulants have little effect.

They are widely used in primary and secondary prevention of thrombotic cerebrovascular or cardiovascular disease.

Contents

Choice of antiplatelet drug

A recent review [1] states: "....low-dose aspirin increases the risk of major bleeding 2-fold compared with placebo. However, the annual incidence of major bleeding due to low-dose aspirin is modest—only 1.3 patients per thousand higher than what is observed with placebo treatment. Treatment of approximately 800 patients with low-dose aspirin annually for cardiovascular prophylaxis will result in only 1 additional major bleeding episode."

Antiplatelet drugs

The most important antiplatelet drugs are:

See also

References

Wikipedia content modification information:

  • This page was last modified on 5 August 2008, at 03:44.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Antiplatelet drug".

The URL for this specific entry is:

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.