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Dr. Howard Hodis
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VIDEO: Dr. Hodis - Will Taking A Daily Aspirin Decrease A Woman's Heart Attack Risk?

Dr. Hodis recalls if taking a baby aspirin each day can prevent heart attacks in women.

Dr. Hodis:
If you are women without previous heart attack or stroke the most current data is pretty strong in indicating that aspirin is not going to protect your heart for a future heart attack. The data is pretty strong in that regard. Now, as you add on risk factors, such as high cholesterol, diabetes and high blood pressure, there may be some protection. We need to see more data, but in general that is what physicians would tend to use aspirin for the more high-risk individual, high-risk women.

If you have had a previous heart attack then most likely you should be on a low dose of aspirin, but we need to be very cautious because we need more data about aspirin in protecting the heart, especially in women who do not have a previous heart attack.

About Dr. Hodis, M.D.:
Dr. Howard N. Hodis is a professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, University of Southern California, Director of the Atherosclerosis Research Unit and has a Harry Bauer & Dorothy Bauer Rawlins Professorship in Cardiology. Graduating with a medical doctorate from USC School of Medicine, he is now a member of the American Heart Association Council on Arteriosclerosis, American College of Physicians, the American Federation for Clinical Research and Society for Preventive Cardiology. His clinical interests are in atherosclerosis, cardiology-lipid disorders and prevention, ultrasound measurement of atherosclerosis, and cardiovascular disease.

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