Cardura Prescription Misfilled With Blood Thinner Coumadin--Result: Brain Hemorrhage & Death

27 Jul 2007

Florida - A national drugstore has misfilled a prescription for Cardura with the "blood thinner" Coumadin causing the death of a healthy man.

Cardura is used alone or in combination with other drugs to treat high blood pressure. It is also used to treat urinary outflow obstruction and the symptoms associated with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).

Coumadin is an anticoagulant which can cause serious bleeding when improperly administered or used without careful monitoring.

It is unclear how the pharmacist provided the customer with a container of Coumadin erroneously labeled "Cardura." What is clear is that the customer took the wrong medication for more than two weeks before he suddenly developed an uncontrollable "bleed" that resulted in a brain hemorrhage from which he never recovered.

What is also becoming clear is that precisely the same error has occurred in the State of Florida on more than this one occasion. And, that the same national drugstore has misfilled numerous other prescriptions throughout the United States.

Pharmacies have multi-step verification procedures which, if followed, would prevent these prescription errors from happening. In order for the erroneously filled prescription to leave the drugstore in the hands of a customer several breaches of mandatory policies and procedures must occur.

The taking of the wrong drug as a result of a misfilled prescription has a double impact upon the patient: the patient is deprived of the treatment prescribed and suffers the insult to his body of a totally improper and probably dangerous medication.

Information concerning any similar misfilled prescriptions is being sought by Attorney Bob Carroll at bob@usalaw.com.