No Trasylol For Me or My Patients, Please
Posted by Clark Venable on 1/24/2006
Trasylol (Aprotinin) is a very expensive drug used during many kinds of cardiac surgery to reduce blood loss. In today's print edition of the NEJM (but not online yet) is a very important article by Dennis Mangano (very, very smart anesthesiologist) which shows an "association between aprotinin and serious end-organ damage" including doubling the risk of renal failure requiring dialysis, a 55% increase in the risk of MI or heart failure, and a near doubling of the risk of stroke or encephalopathy. The good news is that there are alternative drugs which cost one tenth as much and are also very good at reducing the need for blood transfusion. More soon....
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