Ah, good ol' EC aspirin/NSAIDs debate....
Well, there was some interesting research on this on so long ago which looked at incidence of GI irritation in plain vs EC aspirin. They did find that the patients on EC aspirin had a lower rate of GI related problems. Interestingly, the reasons they stated for this was a reduced bioavailability of EC aspirin. As somebody quite rightly pointed out earlier, NSAID GI irritation is cause by a systemic COX inhibition decreasing prostaglandin production and hence reduced gastric protection. That said, I feel sure remembering from my uni days, that aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) crystals are ‘needle like’ (if looked at under an electron microscope) and have been blamed for making *very* small lacerations to the stomach lining.
In my hospital we swap everybody to plain aspirin – it’s a money thing!
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