Doctors question safety of new blood thinners Pradaxa, Xarelto

When the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved two new blood thinners to prevent strokes in some cardiac patients, the medical community was hopeful that the medications would serve as a safer alternative to warfarin, a blood thinner that has been on the market for nearly 60 years. Patients on warfarin need to be monitored on a regular basis because the drug increases the risk for internal bleeding. But growing complaints of bleeding events, some of them fatal, have made some cardiologists leery of prescribing the new blood thinners. The two new drugs include Pradaxa, made by Boehringer Ingelheim, ... Read More