Dosing errors may not cause clot-busting complications

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Although incorrect dosing occurs, it is not the cause of problems arising from clot-busting drugs.
After a heart attack, a patient may well benefit from being given a clot-busting drug. However, giving such treatments is quite complicated and sometimes a patient receives an overdose or an underdose.

Complications arising from clot-busters include bleeding, which can be fatal. A team at Duke University set out to look into the relationship between incorrect dosing and adverse outcomes after clot-busters were administered

They found that there were indeed some errors - about five per cent of patients received incorrect doses. But an analysis showed that the errors were not necessarily the cause of the complications. There were factors relating to the patient themselves that were also relevant, such as how sick they were with other conditions like heart failure or how bad the heart attack had been.

Thus, while those patients whose clot-buster had been administered erroneously did have higher mortality, the mistake may not have caused their death. Clearly the patient factors contributing to complications after clot-busters need to be investigated further.

Source
Journal of the American Medical Association 13th April 2005