Plaintiffs who suffered bleeding complications after taking Pradaxa may benefit from a consultation with a Pradaxa lawsuit lawyer.

Pradaxa, also known as dabigatran, is one of a few new oral anticoagulants that started to enter the market around 2010. Like the older anticoagulant warfarin, Pradaxa is often used to help patients with atrial fibrillation reduce the risk of stroke that comes with that condition.

Atrial fibrillation is an irregular heartbeat that can cause blood to become stagnant in certain parts of the circulatory system. When blood stagnates, it may form clots – and those clots can travel to the brain and cause a stroke.

Pradaxa prevents those clots from forming by inhibiting the blood’s natural clotting mechanism. While that effect helps prevent stroke and other clot-related conditions like pulmonary embolism, it has a flip side of making bleeding injuries much more dangerous for the patient.

Excessive bleeding associated with Pradaxa has been the subject of many reports of injuries and even death. Thousands of Pradaxa-related adverse events have been reported to the FDA, and of those events over 500 have ended in the patients’ death.

Many patients who suffered complications like these feel they were not properly warned by the product information provided with Pradaxa. After a consultation with a Pradaxa lawsuit lawyer, thousands of these patients became plaintiffs in a wave of litigation seeking compensation for their injuries.

Generally, these plaintiffs argue that Pradaxa’s manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim failed to properly warn them about the risk of bleeding associated with Pradaxa. Given a more effective warning, they claim, they would not have agreed to take Pradaxa and so would have avoided suffering dangerous and even life-threatening bleeding injuries.

Plaintiffs also take issue with the lack of a Pradaxa antidote. For about the first five years that Pradaxa was on the market, there was no drug available that could reverse its anticoagulant effect in case of emergency. Many plaintiffs say they were not informed of the lack of an antidote before they elected to take Pradaxa.

The 2014 Pradaxa Settlement

Getting in touch with a Pradaxa lawsuit lawyer has resulted in settlement payments for thousands of former patients.

These patients were plaintiffs in thousands of individual Pradaxa lawsuits that were pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Illinois as part of a multidistrict litigation, or MDL. This MDL was set up by the federal court system to process the massive number of claims over Pradaxa as efficiently as possible.

In May 2014, the drug’s manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim elected to settle all claims pending in the MDL for a total of $650 million. This settlement doesn’t apply to new claims, however. Persons seeking compensation for their Pradaxa-related injuries can still bring their own claims outside the MDL.

Contacting a Pradaxa Lawsuit Lawyer

A Pradaxa lawsuit can be fairly involved. Pharmaceutical products liability lawsuits can involve extraordinary procedures like the Pradaxa MDL or issues like expert testimony that are legally and technically complex.

That’s why prospective plaintiffs stand to gain from having a knowledgeable attorney on their side. A consultation with a Pradaxa lawsuit lawyer can give an affected patient the best idea of their legal position and help them choose the best course of action.