“Should you take aspirin every day? It’s a complicated question, actually. The quick answer depends on your risks. Aspirin has a lot of benefit. The benefit has been shown to be very clearly there for patients over the age of 45 or 50 to help reduce things like heart attacks in men, strokes in women. Now emerging evidence suggests that it can reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. So, aspirin is clearly helpful, and depending on how high your risk is, the greater the benefit is for you. The problem with aspirin is that there’s a downside, as well. Aspirin can lead to bleeding and so-called “major bleeding.” By major bleeding, we mean bleeds that send people to the hospital for either transfusions or admissions, typically in the stomach or the intestine. As you get older, the risk of bleeding goes up as well. Bottom line about aspirin is that it may indeed give you great benefit in reducing the risk of something bad happening to you, like a heart attack, stroke, or cancer. But it’s based directly on your cardiovascular risk and your age. Definitely something you want to talk about with your physician — either with your own primary care doctor or with myself or my colleagues at Mount Sinai Doctors in Brooklyn Heights.”
David Coun, MD, is a board-certified primary care doctor and Chief of Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Doctors Brooklyn Heights. He has lectured regularly on various topics, including smoking cessation, prostatic conditions, EKG review, and physician communication skills. Dr. Coun is fluent in Spanish and has a particular interest in prevention, as well as, the intersection between mental health and chronic medical conditions. Mount Sinai Doctors Brooklyn Heights is a two-floor practice with a walk-in urgent care center and more than 35 specialties. Located at 300 Cadman Plaza West, the practice is situated on the 17th and 18th floors.