(619) 777-1234
As victims of severe bleeding complications from Xarelto and Pradaxa await their day in court, their spirits may be buoyed by the more than $650 million in settlements Boehringer Ingelheim agreed to pay in 2014, to resolve thousands of Pradaxa lawsuits brought against the company on behalf of former users throughout the United States.
If you took Pradaxa or Xarelto in the past, and you have since suffered a major bleeding complication or another serious side effect as a result, consult an experienced product liability lawyer today for legal help. You may have grounds to file a Pradaxa or Xarelto lawsuit against the drug maker, in order to seek fair and timely reimbursement for your losses.
Although Xarelto (rivaroxaban) and Pradaxa (dabigatran) have different active ingredients, both drugs belong to a new class of anticoagulant medications that have been hailed as a breakthrough treatment for patients whose only other option for fifty-plus years was warfarin. Unlike warfarin, which requires frequent blood tests to monitor how well the blood is clotting, and which has been the go-to blood thinner in the United States since the 1950s, Xarelto and Pradaxa were marketed from the very beginning as requiring less patient monitoring and carrying a lower risk of stroke and other side effects. What thousands of former Xarelto and Pradaxa users, many of whom have suffered life-threatening bleeding complications, now know, is that these claims are not entirely true.
Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug administration (FDA) in 2010 and 2011, respectively, Pradaxa and Xarelto have been prescribed to millions of patients across the United States who suffer from atrial fibrillation, a medical condition characterized by an irregular heartbeat. Just two years after Pradaxa came to market though, the blood thinner was blamed for more than 500 patient deaths and thousands of bleeding complications, and that same year, the FDA reported that patients taking Xarelto were three times more likely to suffer fatal side effects than patients taking warfarin. In 2014, federal regulators required the makers of Xarelto to update the drug warning label to reflect the increased risk of “serious or fatal bleeding” from Xarelto.
The main problem with Pradaxa and Xarelto lies in the fact that when the drugs first became available for consumer use, they did not have an approved antidote, designed to reverse the blood-thinning effects of the drugs in the event of a bleeding problem. A Pradaxa reversal agent called Praxbind was approved by the FDA in October 2015, but the move came far too late for former Pradaxa users who suffered devastating bleeding side effects from the anticoagulant drug, or to the family members who lost loved ones to fatal Pradaxa bleeding events. To this day, there is still no approved antidote for Xarelto, which means doctors may be unable to control bleeding complications in patients taking the blood thinner.
As former Pradaxa and Xarelto users across the country become aware of the potential for the new-generation anticoagulant drugs to cause severe and potentially life-threatening bleeding complications, Boehringer Ingelheim and Bayer face a growing number of product liability lawsuits alleging that they failed to adequately warn about the risks associated with the blood thinners. There have been more than 2,800 lawsuits filed over Xarelto side effects in federal courts across the country, all of which have been consolidated in an MDL overseen by U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon in the Eastern District of Louisiana, with the first trials set to begin in the spring of 2017.
With a $650 million Pradaxa settlement agreement from Boehringer Ingelheim already in the books, it’s possible that Bayer will make a similar move and agree to settle the Xarelto product liability claims currently pending against the company. Contact the knowledgeable attorneys at the Monroe Law Group as soon as possible if you believe you have been adversely affected by bleeding complications of the controversial blood thinners Pradaxa or Xarelto.
There is no risk to you in consulting one of our lawyers today. Contact Monroe Law Group now by phone at 866-308-1092 or by email at intake@monroelawgroup.com to arrange for your free, no-obligation consultation.
