By New York Times News Service
UNITED KINGDOM — For months, a simple generic drug has been saving lives on America’s battlefields by slowing the bleeding of even gravely wounded soldiers.
Even better, it is cheap. But its very inexpensiveness has slowed its entry into U.S. emergency rooms, where it might save the lives of bleeding victims of car crashes, shootings and stabbings -- up to 4,000 Americans a year, according to a recent study.
Because there is so little profit in it, the companies that make it do not champion it.
However, the drug is edging slowly closer to adoption as hospitals in many major cities debate adding it to their pharmacies. The drug, tranexamic acid, has long been sold over the counter in Britain and Japan for heavy menstrual flow. After a groundbreaking 2010 trial on 20,000 hemorrhaging trauma patients in 40 countries showed that it saved lives, the British and U.S. armies adopted it. The World Health Organization added it to its essential drugs list last year, and British ambulances now carry it.
(Ed. — The full text and results of the study can be found online at http://crash2.lshtm.ac.uk/ )
Copyright 2012 Chattanooga Publishing Company