The death of an elderly man from a massive brain hemorrhage after a routine fall suggests that bleeding complications from Boehringer Ingelheim's Pradaxa blood clot preventer are largely irreversible, according to the Journal of Neurosurgery.
The recently approved drug is the first in a new class of oral medicines called direct thrombin inhibitors, approved to prevent strokes among patients with a dangerous irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation that mostly affects the elderly.
U.S. regulators in December said they were evaluating other cases of bleeding associated with the drug, whose chemical name is dabigatran, but advised patients to continue the medicine for now.
Three doctors from the University of Utah monitored and described the worsening condition, and ultimate death, of the 83-year-old man who was evaluated at their medical center for what seemed at first a rather routine fall, according to the report Tuesday in the journal's online edition.
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