What are the risks of heparin?
Because heparin affects the blood’s ability to clot, it can lead to bleeding problems. Women and elderly patients tend to have more bleeding problems than men or younger people treated with heparin.1 Adjusting doses for people with smaller body weights helps reduce the risk of bleeding problems. Lower doses of heparin are also used when it is combined with other blood thinning drugs such as the super aspirins (glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors). Heparin can increase the risk of hemorrhagic stroke — bleeding in the brain — especially when it is combined with clot busters.2 Heparin may trigger a type of allergic reaction that results in a dangerously low level of platelets (a type of blood cell involved in clotting). Platelets are also called thrombocytes and this reaction is called heparin-induced-thrombocytopenia (HIT for short). If you are given heparin in the hospital, you will have your blood drawn and tested every day to see if your platelet counts are normal.
