Is Coumadin safe for the elderly?
Coumadin is a very dangerous drug if labs aren’t taken to make sure that your blood isn’t getting too “thin”. Coumadin is a popular blood thinner used to treat a variety of health conditions. It helps prevent strokes, blood clots for conditions such as afib. However, if Coumadin levels get too high you can literally bleed to death. This is a real problem with the elderly as the elderly are prone to falls. Instead of having a hip surgery to repair a broken hip, many elderly are “bleeding out”. In fact, Coumadin is by far the most dangerous drug in the US for the elderly surpassing insulin by 2 to 1. Blood tests must be performed on a regular basis to make sure that the blood is in the proper “thin” range. Failure to perform this simple and cheap test is putting millions of the elderly at great risk. For an in-depth look at this issue, read the following: Washington Post article on Coumadin and the elderly