Pradaxa, a popular blood thinning medication, has had a host of problems since its FDA approval and many patients consider it a defective drug.

Pradaxa, also known generically as dabigatran, is made by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals. It was approved in 2010 to be an alternative to the market standard, warfarin.

Drugmakers said that Pradaxa was superior to warfarin because it didn’t require much monitoring and patients did not have to change their diet to accommodate the drug.

But in May 2014, the drug manufacturer of this allegedly defective drug settled more than 4,000 lawsuits for $650 million. The $650 million would get rid of all active claims in the multidistrict litigation that had been established regarding Pradaxa use. In this settlement, Boehringer Ingelheim did not admit any fault.

In the first two years that Pradaxa was on the drug market, more than 500 deaths were reported associated with Pradaxa. The main concern was uncontrollable bleeding and hemorrhaging. This led many to consider Pradaxa a highly defective drug.

The initial problems with allegedly defective drug Pradaxa were that there was, for a long time, no antidote to uncontrollable bleeding incidents. Hemorrhaging effects of warfarin could be counteracted by the administration of vitamin K. However, until very recently, there was no way to counteract uncontrollable bleeding caused by Pradaxa.

This eventually led to the thousands of Pradaxa lawsuits and reports of death among many patients.

In 2011, Pradaxa was mentioned more than most other drugs in the FDA’s adverse report database, which received over 800 adverse event reports regarding this allegedly defective drug in that year alone. Among all avenues, including reports from doctors and other means, nearly 4,000 serious adverse event reports were attributed to Pradaxa side effects.

Pradaxa works by directly inhibiting the action of a clotting protein called thrombin. It decreases the way that vitamin K works which is needed for blood to clot.

It is prescribed for patients who suffer from atrial fibrillation and venous thromboembolism. Atrial fibrillation is a condition in which an irregular heartbeat could cause blood to collect in an upper chamber of the heart. This can be life-threatening and can cause stroke or heart failure.

Pradaxa and other anticoagulants can help this condition because they help reduce blood clotting that can occur when blood pools in the heart chamber.

Venous thromboembolism, or VTE, is a blood clot that forms in the deep veins of the legs. When this blood clot travels to the lungs it is called a pulmonary embolism. VTE affects 1.5 million people each year and a half a million deaths are attributed to VTE annually.

If you or someone you love have experienced adverse effects of Pradaxa, you may be entitled to legal compensation.