Heparin, a prescription injectable blood coagulant often used in hemodialysis (the filtering of blood) and cardiac invasive procedures, has lead to hundreds of injuries. We asked Douglass Kreis, a Florida attorney whose firm protects the rights of consumers who are seriously injured due to defective drugs such as heparin, to put these injuries into context. Here’s what he told us in a recent interview:

Let’s put this into context of why people are suffering injury and why people are so susceptible to injury. Comparing heparin to pharmaceutical drugs, for example, pharmaceutical pills are ingested. They are metabolized. The body does some cleansing of what’s ingested and so the body has already gone through this protective process. The difference is that heparin is injected right into the blood. If a product is adulterated, a person is at great risk for an acute event because the product travels through the typical route of passage to the body before it hits the liver, so that the liver is not able to assist in cleaning out impurities, then you’ve got immediate contact with something which has harmful bacteria or other adulterated qualities with the body and its vital organs.

In contrast, when a pill is taken, enzymes in the stomach work on the pill, it goes through the intestinal tract and through the liver and finally gets into the blood stream. So, with heparin, people are suffering from pulmonary episodes, difficulty breathing, nausea, vomiting, edema and swelling, sweating, rapid blood pressure drop or rapid falling in blood pressure. These can send the body into shock and there’s evidence of deaths within the United States among consumers who have received heparin treatment.

How can heparin’s source be traced?

Kreis says that the available literature is still unclear on the relationship, in terms of how heparin is adulterated, what the specific mechanism of action is that has giving rise to these various symptomology and how it can be traced. He continued:

There seems to be two groups of thought. One is that we need to go back and trace, through this extraordinarily intricate distribution chain, the heparin raw product back to the actual pigs and try to find the livestock that’s sick and producing this tainted heparin.

The other is that it is not realistic to think that we’re going to be able to go into villages and try to figure this out. There’s a lack of paperwork and regulation, so we need to put a stop to the importation of any heparin from China without there being a prophylactic at our border. The FDA is extraordinarily under funded and under subsidized, so the drug manufacturers have to bear that burden. But, it’s an additional cost and they’re not just going to pay it without a fight.

Synthetic heparin?

There is a synthetic that can be manufactured in place of the heparin sodium used in most surgeries, according to Kreis. However, he says that “It’s more expensive for a manufacturer to create this product in a synthetic form, but again, they’re not going to go down without a huge fight – especially when they have to answer to their stockholders. It really becomes a balancing act of the health, welfare and safety of consumers or maybe putting a product in the stream of commerce that is considered ‘safe enough’ where the benefits outweigh the risks. That’s why it’s kept on the US market without scrutiny, recall or reprisal.”

If you’ve been injured due to heparin use, contact an attorney to discuss your situation. The consultation is free and without obligation. To contact a qualified attorney whose practice focuses in this area of law, please click here.