Anticoagulant medications, or blood thinners, are drugs that help reduce the risk of blood clots. Although they may be called blood thinners, they don’t really thin the blood.

What they do is that they help prevent dangerous blood clots from forming in the patient’s heart or blood vessels. Persons with a heart condition called atrial fibrillation or who have recently undergone hip or knee replacement surgery may be at risk for developing such clots. Without treatment and/or medication, these blood clots could circulate through a patient’s bloodstream and lead to a stroke or embolism.

Pradaxa, whose generic name is dabigatran, is an oral anticoagulant that is used to prevent such blood clots. It is frequently taken every 12 hours and includes a dosage of about 150 mg. It was developed so that it would not have certain drawbacks associated with older generations of anticoagulants. But aftermarket reports have since shown that Pradaxa side effects can be life-threatening and in some cases fatal.

Risks Involved in Pradaxa Side Effects

There are some serious adverse effects and Pradaxa side effects that have come to light in recent years.

The FDA has issued black box warnings about certain Pradaxa side effects. A black box warning is the most serious type of warning the agency issues.

In these warnings, the agency alerted patients that they could be at serious risk for formation of new blood clots that could result in life-threatening injury.

The FDA also warns that patients who receive a spinal injection, such as for anesthesia or a spinal puncture, could be at risk for developing a spinal hematoma. A spinal hematoma like this could lead to long-term paralysis, the agency warns.

Severe Bleeding Linked to Pradaxa

Pradaxa has also been known to cause serious bleeding, and it can sometimes be extremely fatal. This occurs because Pradaxa, lowers the chance of blood clots forming in the body.

Blood clots work to help protect the body and works as one of the body’s self defense mechanisms. If bacteria or microorganisms enter the body through a wound or cut in the skin, a defense mechanism of the body is to help seal the wound so that no more bacteria can enter. A scab does just that using platelets and a protein called fibrin.

Because Pradaxa inhibits the blood’s natural ability to slow and stop bleeding, Pradaxa side effects can cause serious bleeding that can be fatal. These risks increase even more for patients who have kidney problems, who have a history or stomach ulcers or stomach and intestinal bleeding, or who take medication that increase risks of bleeding, such as aspirin or NSAIDs.

Thousands of patients who suffered dangerous Pradaxa bleeding have taken to the court system to seek compensation for what they say was an exposure to an unreasonable risk without proper warning.

As plaintiffs in several thousand Pradaxa lawsuits, these patients allege that Pradaxa’s manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim failed to properly warn them about the risk of deadly bleeding associated with Pradaxa. They believe that with a proper warning, they could have avoided these episodes of life-threatening bleeding.