Quoted from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/business/a-rising-anti-stroke-drug-is-tied-to-risk-of-bleeding-deaths.html#
A Promising Drug With a Flaw
By KATIE THOMAS
Published: November 2, 2012Dr. Bryan A. Cotton, a trauma surgeon in Houston, had not heard much about the new anticlotting drug Pradaxa other than the commercials he had seen during Sunday football games.
Enlarge This Image
Jeffrey Phelps for The New York Times
Walter Daumler with a photograph of his sister Doris Daumler, who was on Pradaxa and died in May.
Then people using Pradaxa started showing up in his emergency room. One man in his 70s fell at home and arrived at the hospital alert and talking. But he rapidly declined. “We pretty much threw the whole kitchen sink at him,” recalled Dr. Cotton, who works at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center. “But he still bled to death on the table.”
Unlike warfarin, an older drug, there is no antidote to reverse the blood-thinning effects of Pradaxa.
“You feel helpless,” Dr. Cotton said. The drug has contributed to the bleeding deaths of at least eight patients at the hospital. “And that’s a very bad feeling for us.”
Pradaxa has become a blockbuster drug in its two years on the market, bringing in more than $1 billion in sales for its maker, the privately held German drug maker Boehringer Ingelheim.
[Article continues at original source]