If this is not your name, click here. Other Ophthalmic Surgery Organ Transplantation Orthopaedics Other Osteoarthritis Osteoporosis Otitis Otorhino. Yet this group is less likely to receive stroke-preventing drugs than younger patients, a new study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found.
Atrial fibrillation allows blood to pool in the heart, promoting clotting.
If a clot breaks off and enters the bloodstream, it can lodge in the brain, causing a stroke. And it becomes more common with age. Clinical trials with otherwise healthy subjects between ages 65 and 75 have shown that warfarin reduces the risk of stroke and that aspirin is less effective. The frail elderly could not be included in the trials, although atrial fibrillation causes one-third of strokes in octogenarians. Our findings are the first to show a significant benefit of prescribing antithrombotic therapy in octogenarians with atrial fibrillation.