Episode Details

NEJM articles:

Volume 393

No. 23

December 11, 2025

This clinical trial investigated whether adding the drug ticagrelor to standard aspirin therapy would improve outcomes for patients who had undergone coronary-artery bypass grafting (CABG) for an acute coronary syndrome. Researchers randomly assigned over 2,200 patients across Nordic centers to receive either the combination therapy or aspirin alone for one year to evaluate a primary outcome that included death, stroke, or heart attack. The results demonstrated that the dual-therapy group did not have a lower incidence of these serious adverse cardiovascular events compared to the aspirin-alone group. Furthermore, the combination of ticagrelor and aspirin was associated with a significantly increased risk of major bleeding, suggesting no clinical benefit for this specific patient population.