New oral therapy to cure VTE

JAKARTA: Orthopedic surgery patients often experience venous blood clots, known as Venous Thromboembolism (VTE), which can be lethal if they are not properly treated.

"Forty to 60 percent of patients who undergo orthopedic surgery, such as hip or knee replacements, experience VTE, which is the third most common type of cardiovascular disease," Dewi Muliatin Santoso, head of medical regulation at Bayer Schering Pharma, said Thursday.

The pharmaceutical company is producing a new drug for VTE therapy, called Rivaroxaban, which can prevent blood from coagulating.

"Patients can take the drug orally, so it requires no monitoring like those using injection therapy," she told The Jakarta Post.

In many cases, VTE goes undetected, making it harder to track cases.

"Indonesia and other countries in Asia have no data about VTE patients," Dewi said, adding that countries in Europe kept data of known cases as the disease causes over 500,000 deaths in the continent every year. - JP