The Los Angeles Times' Health Section has a feature today on the drug dabigatran, the first new drug in two decades to be approved to prevent stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation. As I blogged about earlier this month, a recent study showed that the drug was as effective as, but less likely to cause certain side effects than, its alternative, warfarin. And a separate analysis, conducted by researchers here, showed that the drug also appears to be more cost-effective.
"It's a potential game-changer," Mintu Turakhia, MD, MAS, a cardiac electrophysiologist with Stanford and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, says of dabigatran in the piece. Turakhia was senior author on the cost-effectiveness study, which appeared in the Nov. 2 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Previously: Newly approved drug appears to provide more cost-effective stroke prevention than warfarin
