NHS prevents thousands of strokes with blood-thinning drug push

Thousands of lives have been saved by giving blood-thinning drugs to people with a heart condition that puts them at risk of a stroke, according to the head of the NHS.

Since January 2022, about 460,000 people in England who suffer from atrial fibrillation (AF) – a dangerously irregular heart rate – have begun taking one of four anticoagulant drugs that are proven to reduce stroke risk.

Speedy rollout of the drugs has kept 4,000 people alive who would otherwise have died and also prevented about 17,000 strokes, according to Amanda Pritchard.

Strokes kill about 27,000 people a year in England and lead to about 120,000 being admitted to hospital.

An NHS-wide drive to encourage take-up of the drugs means that 90% of the 1.5 million people in England with AF are now using them. That should result in fewer strokes, which are a leading cause of death and disability, given that AF causes about one in five strokes.

“The rapid rollout of these drugs is a monumental step forward in providing the best possible care for patients with cardiovascular disease,” Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, will say in a speech on Thursday at the King’s Fund health thinktank’s annual conference.

The drugs, called direct oral anticoagulants, help stop blood from clotting, thereby reducing the risk of a clot developing and causing a stroke. In 2021, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommended that doctors prescribe four anticoagulants: apixaban, dabigatran, edoxaban and rivaroxaban. Edoxaban is the most commonly prescribed.

Dr Maeva May, the Stroke Association’s director of policy and research, hailed the widespread use of the drugs as “fantastic news … [because] AF accounts for one in five strokes and strokes in people with AF are more severe and are more likely to result in death or serious disability”. The right medication can prevent most AF-related strokes, she added.

NHS England has used its spending power to cut deals with the makers of the four drugs, which has made them much more widely available.

The British Heart Foundation praised the NHS’s “great progress towards its goal of reducing stroke deaths”.