When it comes to preventive health, few tenets are as entrenched as daily aspirin. For more than 30 years, many people have relied on the pain reliever for added protection against a first heart attack or stroke.
So it came as a shock to many this month when an influential expert panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, seemed to reverse decades of medical practice, announcing that daily low-dose aspirin should no longer be automatically recommended in middle age to prevent heart attack.
At a time when many people already feel whipsawed by shifting pandemic advice (on masks, viral transmission and booster shots), the new aspirin recommendations left some shaking their heads.
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But experts say it should be reassuring to patients to know that even the most trusted medical guidelines are being reviewed and updated as scientific understanding evolves.
“It seems like it happens overnight, but this is how science works,” Dr. Sophie M. Balzora, a gastroenterologist at N.Y.U. Langone Health, said. “If we had the same guidelines all the time, then the question would be: Are we really advancing science? Are we really learning more?”
