Studies Call New Blood Thinners Effective Treatments for Clots

Newly available blood-thinning medicines should allow many of the 400,000 Americans who suffer dangerous clots each year to be treated at home, rather than spend a week in the hospital, researchers say. Two studies from Canada and the Netherlands published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine show that the drugs can be injected safely and effectively for treatment of a common condition called deep-vein thrombosis. The new class of drugs consists of improved versions of heparin, which has been the mainstay of clot treatment since the 1940s.

Heparin’s main drawback is unpredictability. Some patients need a little, some a lot, and this can change during the course of treatment. But the improved type of medicine, low molecular weight heparin, works exactly the same way in everyone.