Tainted Heparin is Still Available in Hospitals
After discovering that contaminated heparin is still available in some hospitals, medical centers and pharmacies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration renewed its efforts to recall the tainted blood thinner last Friday.
On May 9, the FDA sent out a notice requesting “health professionals and facilities review and examine all drug/device storage areas, including emergency kits, dialysis units and automated drug storage cabinets to ensure that all recalled heparin products have been removed and are no longer available for patient use.”
The action was taken after the FDA received a report of the problem from California health officials. Karen Riley, a spokeswoman for the FDA, told Wall Street Journal reporter Alicia Mundy:
“They checked and found more than a handful of hospitals had not removed all contaminated heparin. We found it on crash carts, catheter labs, and even on one hospital pharmacist’s shelf.”
Heparin, derived from pig intestines, is typically injected into patients to reduce the risk of blood clots in catheters or during kidney dialysis and cardiac surgery.
Baxter International, one of the largest producers of heparin in the U.S., announced the voluntary recall of nine lots of heparin on Jan. 17, 2008, after reports of allergic-type reactions in patients given the drug. A month later, the FDA released a statement indicating that some patients who received heparin injections suffered symptoms, sometimes fatal, ranging from nausea and diarrhea to shortness of breath, dangerously low blood pressure and allergic or hypersensitivity reaction. The FDA noted that 350 adverse events had been reported since the end of 2007, three times the number that had been reported previously.
Investigators with the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control subsequently announced that the drug had been contaminated with a chemically altered form of chondroitin sulfate at Chinese manufacturing facilities hired by Baxter.
If you have a loved one who has been injured or died after receiving heparin, contact Carey & Danis. We can help. Carey & Danis is a national law firm that represents personal injury victims and their families.
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