Drug combo curbs artery re-closing after some hea...( DALLAS July 16 Aspirin plus the antic...),Health

"The chance of artery closure was reduced by 45 percent by the combined therapy," says senior researcher Freek W.A. Verheugt, M.D., Ph.D., director of cardiology at the Heartcenter of University Medical Center, The Netherlands. "This study shows that patients should use at least three months of oral anticoagulants plus aspirin after they have been treated with clot busters for a heart attack."

In some heart attacks, an electrocardiogram reveals ST-elevation, an indicator of heart damage often associated with a blood clot. Survival after an ST-elevation heart attack depends on how quickly coronary blood flow is restored. Recurrent heart attacks are often attributed to reocclusion, or closing up, of the artery originally involved in the heart attack. Physicians use antithrombotic drugs to prevent clots or fibrinolytic drugs to destroy clots. But arteries reocclude after the successful use of fibrinolytics in as many as 30 percent of patients within the first year, Verheugt says.

"In Europe, it is common to add oral anticoagulants to aspirin treatment in patients with clogged coronary arteries," he says.

Researchers hypothesized that the prolonged combination of aspirin and coumarin would be more effective than the standard treatment of aspirin alone. They identified 308 heart-attack patients participating in the Antithrombotics in the Prevention of Reocclusion in Coronary Thrombolysis (APRICOT)-2 study involving seven clinics in The Netherlands between 1994 and 2000. Within 48 hours after patients received clot-busting drug therapy, doctors tested patients' blood flow on the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) scale, a measure of flow through the affected art
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Contact: Bridgette Mc Neill
bridgette.mcneill@heart.org
214-706-1135
American Heart Association
15-Jul-2002