Deadly blood clots that form after joint-replacement surgery cause thousands of deaths each year. However, an OU researcher joined researchers around the world to discover a new medicine with the capability of preventing lethal blood clots.

Gary Raskob, dean of the OU College of Public Health, served as a lead researcher on a team that included scientists from Denmark, Australia and Canada to discover the new medicine, Apixaban.

Apixaban is an oral medication that could replace current preventative blood clot treatments without increasing the risk of bleeding, Raskob said.

“Joint-replacement surgery is really a surgery for the quality of life,” he said. “The last things you want are fatal complications.”

Current preventative blood clot treatments include a number of uncomfortable injections as well as one oral anti-clotting medication that is hard for doctors to manage because of its side effects, said Raskob.

The results showed that Apixaban was just as efficient at preventing blood clots as the current procedures and medications, according to the Web site.

“This discovery is very important in terms of safety, efficacy and care,” said Raskob.

The researchers published their findings Aug. 6 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The research involved more than 3,000 patients in a double-blind study, according to the abstract of the study on the New England Journal of Medicine Web site.

Raskob said funding for the research came from an academic-industry partnership between researchers and Bristol-Myers Squibb, a pharmaceutical company.

Raskob said blood clots can form in the large veins of the legs after knee or hip replacement surgeries, a condition known as deep-vein thrombosis. He said this condition is dangerous because the blood clots could break free and move through the bloodstream to the lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism.

Deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism are the most common causes of sudden death after joint-replacement surgery, according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons Web site.

Raskob said the number of joint-replacement surgeries will increase dramatically in the coming years, making the discovery of Apixaban timely and relevant. More than 700,000 primary total hip and knee replacements are performed each year in the U.S., and that number is expected to grow to more than 3.5 million by 2030, according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons Web site.

“This could be an important advantage for patient safety and doctors and patients would have the advantage,” Raskob said.

He said Apixaban is now being studied in clinical trials, and if the FDA approves the drug, patients undergoing joint-replacement surgery will have a valuable option.

“I don’t want to pre-judge what the FDA might say,” Raskob said. “But so far, the results are favorable.”