The German-Austrian aspirin trial: a comparison of acetylsalicylic acid, placebo and phenprocoumon in secondary prevention of myocardial infarction. On behalf of the German-Austrian Study Group.

In a multicenter clinical trial on the prevention of recurrent myocardial infarction, 946 patients who had survived a myocardial infarction for 30-42 days were randomly allocated to acetylsalicylic acid (ASA, 1.5 g/day) (317 patients), placebo (309 patients) or phenprocoumon treatment (320 patients) and were followed to determine the incidence of total mortality, coronary death and nonfatal recurrent myocardial infarction. The ASA and placebo groups were treated in double-blind fashion. The observation period for each patient was 2 years. Total mortality was lower in the ASA group (27 patients) than in the placebo (32 patients) and phenprocoumon groups (39 patients). There were 13 coronary deaths (fatal myocardial infarction and sudden death) in the ASA group, 22 in the placebo group and 26 in the phenprocoumon group. This represents a reduction rate of 42.3% in the ASA group compared with placebo (p less than 0.1) and of 46.3% in the ASA group with phenprocoumon (p approximately 0.07). Considering male patients alone, the difference regarding coronary death is significant between ASA vs placebo (p less than 0.05, reduction rate 56.4%) and ASA vs phenprocoumon (p less than 0.05, reduction rate 55.6%). Coronary events (coronary death and nonfatal recurrent myocardial infarctions) were lower in the ASA group (24 events) than in the placebo (37 events) (p less than 0.07) or phenprocoumon group (32 events).