Drug to slow bleeding leads to more deaths -study

CHICAGO, Feb 7 (Reuters) A drug used to limit blood loss while patients undergo coronary-artery bypass surgery also carries a higher five-year risk of death than cheaper generic alternatives, a researcher said on Tuesday.

Based on five years of data on 3,876 heart bypass patients from around the world, the death rate among the 1,072 patients given Bayer AG's drug aprotinin was nearly 21 percent, two-thirds higher than the mortality rate among surgery patients not given anti-bleeding drugs.

In coronary-artery surgery, a clogged artery that normally feeds the heart is bypassed with a section of vein or artery transplanted from the patient's leg or from elsewhere.

Many heart patients are given a blood thinner upon arriving at the hospital, while aprotinin administered during surgery would cause blood to clot.

''These patients have come to the hospital because they have vessels that are clotted,'' said study author Dr. Dennis Mangano of the Ischemia Research and Education Foundation, based in San Bruno, California.

''Isn't there a subset of patients that might be adversely affected by a drug which, though it mitigates bleeding, promotes clotting? And we found that there was,'' Mangano said in a telephone interview.

A majority of the deaths in the study, which was published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, were caused by heart attacks, heart failure, strokes or kidney failure. Mangano said clots started by the drug likely build up over time and block arteries, starving organs of oxygen.

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