A new Pradaxa lawsuit is joining the mass legal action against Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, alleging that their drug Pradaxa is dangerous despite marketing claims of being safer and easier to take than older, off-patent blood thinners. This particular Pradaxa lawsuit was filed by the estate of a man who died while taking the anticoagulant treatment.

Pradaxa is a blood thinner or anticoagulant, which is a type of drug treatment designed to make it harder for people to form blood clots. While blood clots can be a normal part of the healing process after an injury, some blood clots can pose an ever present danger to some patients’ health. When a blood clot forms inside the body, it may block the blood vessels that supply critical tissues and organs like the brain, the heart, the lungs, and others. Surgeons call these events strokes, myocardial infarctions/heat attacks, and pulmonary embolisms respectively. Blood thinners like Pradaxa make it harder to form blood clots, which can reduce the risk of stroke and other problems in patients with a high risk for dangerous blood clots. But all blood thinners carry some risks, and Pradaxa side effects may have special risks not seen in older blood thinners.

Pradaxa Side Effects Allegations

According to this Pradaxa side effects lawsuit, Ronald G. of Arkansas was prescribed Pradaxa in December of 2011 to treat his atrial fibrillations or A-fib condition, a type of heart murmur that puts a person at a higher-than-average risk of stroke. But in early February 2012, Ronald was rushed to Mercy Hospital Northwest in Arkansas. The Pradaxa lawsuit holds that a medical emergency was caused by adverse Pradaxa side effects.

All blood thinners, including Pradaxa, carry the risk of working too well, in that they can cause uncontrollable bleeding. If a patient on Pradaxa or other blood thinners experiences a minor injury, it can be difficult for them to form a blood clot and stop bleeding without medical attention. If the blood thinner is working just a little too well, a minor cut can lead to a patient bleeding to death. When this type of controlled bleeding happens with a minor internal injury, it can also cause other Pradaxa internal bleeding complications, like gastrointestinal bleeding or pulmonary bleeding.

Ronald was admitted to the emergency room with intracranial hemorrhaging, a type of internal bleeding of the brain. Ironically, intracranial hemorrhaging has many of the same symptoms as a stroke, but its cause is in many ways the opposite of a stroke. In this case, the brain itself bleeds, but the Pradaxa lawsuit holds that this is not merely caused by Pradaxa in the way that all anticoagulants can cause uncontrollable bleeding. The Pradaxa lawsuit alleges that Pradaxa and other newer-generation blood thinners carry special risks that complicate the treatment of internal bleeing injuries like Ronald’s.

Warfarin and other older-generation blood thinners have known reversal agents. This means that if a patient taking Warfarin has an uncontrollable bleeding incident, doctors can effectively turn off the medication by giving the patient a very large dose of vitamin K. This allows the patient to stop bleeding if they have intracranial hemorrhaging or other serious medical problems. Newer blood thinners like Pradaxa do not have known reversal agents, so doctors have very few options to treat uncontrolled bleeding in Pradaxa side effects patients. In many cases, massive transfusions can keep a patient alive, but in the case of intracranial hemorrhaging, there is also the issue of blood pooling in the brain and creating damaging pressure.

The individual Pradaxa Side Effects Lawsuit is Case No. 0122, filed within the larger Pradaxa Lawsuit MDL In Re: Pradaxa (Dabigatran Etexilate) Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2385, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.