Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Heparin Update

From the FDA site more information:

The chart below shows numbers of deaths reported after heparin administration that occurred and were submitted to FDA over the last fifteen months (i.e., from January 1, 2007 through March 31, 2008).

* The reports are sorted according to the date of the medical event in the report, indicated in the first column. This date may be different than the date of death.

* The second column indicates the number of deaths reported after heparin administration, regardless of cause.

* The third column indicates the number of death reports that included one or more allergic symptom(s) or symptoms of hypotension (low blood pressure). These are the events that prompted a series of heparin recalls.

* There have been 103 reports of death since January 1, 2007; 91 were reported to FDA on or after January 1, 2008.

* Of the 62 reports of death that included one or more allergic symptom(s) or symptoms of hypotension, 56 were reported to FDA on or after January 1, 2008.

* The fact that allergic symptoms or hypotension was reported does not mean that these were the cause of death in all cases.

* FDA received reports of 41 patients who died without mention of allergy or hypotension. These patients died of a variety of causes.

The chart may be found here.