The News
Post-op dangers found with heart-surgery drug
By Carla K. Johnson The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 02/06/2007 06:31:35 PM MST

Chicago - A drug widely used to prevent excessive bleeding during heart surgery appears to raise the risk of dying in the five years afterward by nearly 50 percent, an international study found.
The researchers said replacing the drug - aprotinin, sold by Bayer AG under the brand name Trasylol - with other, cheaper medications for a year would prevent 10,000 deaths worldwide over the next five years.
The findings were more bad news for Trasylol: The same scientists found the drug raised the risk of kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes in a study published last year. Most of the deaths in the new study were related to those problems.

The Research
Read the article behind this story in The Journal of the American Medical Association