Recently, at the American Stroke Association’s 2005 International Stroke Symposium in New Orleans, Dr. Patrick Michael from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, presented a new research result: stroke patients who take aspirin intermittently have a significantly increased risk of having another stroke. The findings are the result of a study conducted by Dr. Patruk on 618 patients. In his study, Dr. Patruk also found that a typical second stroke episode usually occurs in the first 8-10 days or so after a patient interrupts taking aspirin, which is discontinued to prevent intraoperative bleeding because the patient needs to undergo surgery. Therefore, Dr. Patruk believes that aspirin should not be interrupted for fear of the risk of surgical bleeding. A scientific research group from the Pasteur Hospital in Nice, France, recently came to a similar conclusion as Dr. Patruk. On this issue, Professor Li Xiaoying of the PLA General Hospital said, “Aspirin has a pivotal role in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and has a good cost performance ratio, with Bayer’s product Bay Aspirin, for example, costing no more than$20 per month. But unfortunately, the application of aspirin is far from popular. About 5 million people die from coronary heart disease in China every year, and only 15% of them receive aspirin treatment. If all of these patients could use aspirin, nearly one million deaths would be avoided each year.”