Passage One

　　A new study reports the common drug aspirin greatly reduces life threatening problems after an operation to replace blocked blood vessels to the heart. More than 800,000 people around the world have this heart surgery each year. The doctors who carried out this study say giving aspirin to patients soon after the operation could save thousands of lives. People usually take aspirin to control pain and reduce high body temperature. Doctors also advise some people to take aspirin to help prevent heart attacks. About 10-15 percent of these heart operations end in death or damage to the heart or other organs. The new study shows that even a small amount of aspirin reduced such threats. The doctors said the chance of death for patients who took aspirin would fall by 67%. They claimed this was true if the aspirin was given within 48 hours of the operation. The doctors believe aspirin helps heart surgery patients because it can prevent blood from thickening and blood vessels from being blocked. However, the doctors warned that people who have stomach bleeding or other bad reactions from aspirin should not take it after heart surgery.

　　原文出处：

　　Aspirin After Bypass Surgery

　　A new study says the common drug aspirin greatly reduces life-threatening problems after an operation to replace blocked blood vessels to the heart. The operation involves attaching new blood vessels onto the heart to bypass blockages in the arteries that feed blood to the heart.

　　More than eight-hundred-thousand people around the world have this heart bypass surgery each year. The doctors who carried out the study say giving aspirin to patients soon after the operation could save thousands of lives.

　　People usually take aspirin to control pain and reduce high body temperature. Doctors also advise some people to take aspirin to help prevent heart attacks.

　　About ten to fifteen percent of bypass operations end in death or damage to the heart, kidneys or intestines. The new study said even a small amount of aspirin reduced such threats. The doctors said the chance of death for bypass patients in the hospital who took aspirin fell by sixty-seven percent. They said this was true if the aspirin was given within forty-eight hours of the operation.

　　The research was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dennis Mangano (mahn-GAH-no) heads the Ischemia Research and Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco, California. Doctor Mangano led a team that examined the records of more than five-thousand patients in seventeen countries who had a heart bypass operation. Some patients received aspirin daily after the operation. Other patients did not receive aspirin.

　　The doctors believe aspirin aids bypass surgery patients in two ways. They say it prevents blood from thickening and forming clots that block blood vessels. They also believe aspirin reduces inflammation in blood vessels which increases after an operation and can damage organs.