Heparin is a drug given to patients to help prevent blood clots from becoming big and causing serious problems.  But now it is being investigated if heparin is the cause of sickening five patients at the Beebe Medical Center in Delaware.

Wallace Hudson, vice president for corporate affairs at the Lewes Hospital, said that two of the sick patients have recovered, and no further cases have been discovered.  It is not certain when samples that have been sent to be tested will come back he said.  “We hope it’s soon.  We don’t want this thing dragging on,” he stated.  “But we need to find out what went wrong and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he concluded.

The three other patients have been transferred to the University of Maryland Medical Center and the Christiana Hospital.

Baxter Healthcare Corporation is the manufacturer of the heparin.  They recalled batches of the drug in 2008 when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that it was contaminated.

The use of heparin has been suspended at Beebe.  Representatives from Baxter were said to be at Beebe to assist with an examination of the accident.

The ability of heparin to repress clotting and coagulation makes it suspect for serious side effects if given in too large doses.  In itself, heparin is not a defective drug but some shipments of the drug, which were made in China, were tainted.

Three of the sickened patients had internal bleeding according to Hudson.  Beebe has notified the FDA along with the Delaware Health Care Operations Center.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Heparin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.