Common drug could reduce head injury deaths
A low cost and widely available drug could reduce deaths in traumatic brain injury patients by as much as 20 percent, depending on the severity of injury, a major global study funded by NIHR has found.
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine say that tranexamic acid - a drug that prevents bleeding into the brain by inhibiting blood clot breakdown - has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide.
The CRASH-3 trial involved more than 12,000 head injury patients recruited from 175 hospitals across 29 countries, including 74 from Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, 20 from Reading's Royal Berkshire Hospital, 11 from Milton Keynes University Hospital and seven from Slough's Wexham Park Hospital.
More information on the findings of the CRASH-3 trial is available on the NIHR website.
