If you or a loved one suffered from adverse side effects after taking the blood thinner Pradaxa, you may have a legal claim.

Research suggests that the drug is linked to a range of Pradaxa adverse side effects, including the following:

• Internal bleeding
• Kidney bleeding
• Gastrointestinal bleeding
• Heart attack
• Stroke
• Brain hemorrhage
• Death

Patients who have reported bleeding side effects have claimed that the drug’s makers knew that the drug posed a serious risk to human health, but released the drug onto the market anyway. Some patients believe the company misinformed patients and medical professionals about the safety of the drug, putting many patients’ health and safety at risk.

Pradaxa is also known by its generic name dabigatran and was approved by the FDA in 2010. It is manufactured by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals and is one of a class of drugs called Direct Thrombin Inhibitors that is used to thin blood in patients who are prone to clots.

When it was first released, it seemed like an exciting new option for patients, because it was advertised as needing less monitoring than its predecessor, Coumadin (warfarin), and was advertised as more convenient for patients. According to the drug’s marketing, whereas Coumadin had to be taken twice a day, Pradaxa could only be taken once a day and required less of a change of diet than Coumadin.

However, experts worry that this was more of a marketing ploy to entice consumerism into using the drug than it was a statement of the drug’s true properties. All blood thinners can increase a patient’s risk of bleeding, but reportedly, a risk of bleeding with Pradaxa is much more serious than with other drugs like Coumadin.

Patients who suffered a bleed while taking Coumadin were able to flush their systems with vitamin K to rid their body of the drug, which would enable their blood to clot and the bleeding would stop, but reportedly, such a treatment is not effective in the case of a Pradaxa bleed. So, patients who suffer a Pradaxa bleed do not have a reliable way to get the bleed to stop, making the effects possibly much more grave.

In fact, in the year after Pradaxa was released, over 260 deaths were possibly caused by internal bleeding, gastrointestinal bleeding, hemorrhage, stroke that resulted from Pradaxa use.

Pradaxa Adverse Side Effects Lawsuit Investigation

Patients allege that Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals knew that the drug was dangerous, but hid this information from the public.

In fact, some experts believe that the drug company did not sufficiently research the effects of taking the drug only once per day as opposed to twice per day, as is recommended in the case of Coumadin. Allegedly, the spikes and lows of the amount of the drug caused by the once-daily dosing may put patients at a higher risk of bleeding, and that the companies misled the public into believing that the one-daily doing was safe.

If you or a loved one have suffered Pradaxa adverse side effects, you may be eligible for a Pradaxa lawsuit investigation. If the drug makers are found to have concealed information about Pradaxa adverse side effects, they could be held liable for patient injury, and injured patients could receive compensation.