Antiplatelets Medicine

Platelets are tiny particles in your blood that your body employs to create clots and prevent bleeding. If you have an excess of platelets or your platelets clump together too much, you are more likely to develop clots. 

Antiplatelet medicines serve to reduce your platelets’ stickiness and thus prevent blood clots from occurring in your arteries.

Who Should Take Antiplatelet Medicines?

Antiplatelet Medicines can be taken to:

• Prevent heart attack or stroke in patients with peripheral arterial disease (most commonly clogging of a leg artery).
• Prevent or treat heart attacks.
• Prevent stroke or transient ischemic attacks (TIAs are warning signs of an impending stroke. TIAS are also referred to as “mini-strokes.”)
• prevents clots from forming within stents placed within your arteries to widen them.
• Treat acute coronary syndrome.
• Prevent clots following bypass graft surgery using a man-made or prosthetic graft done on arteries below the knee.

When to Call the Doctor

• Any unusual bleeding like blood in urines or stools, nose bleed, any odd bruising, heavy cut bleeding, black sticky stools, spit up of blood, more severe than usual bleeding or abnormal menstrual bleeding or unwarranted vaginal bleeding, coffee ground vomitus
• Dizzy
• Trouble swallowing
• Band around your chest or chest ache
• Swollen face or hands
• Itch, hives, or the feeling of stinging in the face or hands
• Wheeze or being short of breath
• Extremely severe abdominal pain
• Rash on skin