Abstract

A short cut review was carried out to establish whether, in patients with suspected acute coronary syndromes presenting to the emergency department, what form of aspirin has the most rapid onset of action. Papers comparing the speed of onset of chewable aspirin, or soluble aspirin or solid aspirin were included. This summarises all three parts of a combined best evidence topic report (BET). The clinical bottom line is that chewable aspirin may be faster than soluble aspirin at decreasing the amount of time to achieve platelet inhibition in a patient. Soluble aspirin is faster than whole solid aspirin, which is faster than enteric-coated aspirin.