Is Less Monitoring Worth Fatal, Uncontrolled, Side Effects?
Xarelto and Pradaxa are the newest in anticoagulants. They have been considered breakthrough because they require less need for ongoing patient monitoring compared to that of it’s predecessor Coumadin (also known as Warfarin).
It’s great that the new drugs require less monitoring, but many people believe this is part of the problem, and that less monitoring leads to more serious problems that go undetected!
According to the Reuters article Insight: Top heart doctors fret over new blood thinners,
“Both new drugs were designed to sidestep risks of Warfarin, including brain hemorrhages and other dangerous bleeding, and become mainstays of a new therapeutic market worth at least $10 billion a year. Patients taking Warfarin require close monitoring and regular blood tests as well as dietary and lifestyle changes.”
Many would argue that it is the regular testing an monitoring required that make Warfarin a safer treatment. The fact that Xarelto requires less monitoring hardly seems like a benefit considering the potentially deadly side effects and the current lack of an antidote for these side effects.
