(AP) -- Heart surgery patients were more likely to die if given an antibleeding drug, Trasylol, two new studies have found. The manufacturer, Bayer, stopped selling the drug after a Canadian study was halted because of deaths. The research reignites a controversy over Trasylol, which was on the market for 14 years. The studies are being published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine. The first looked at about 10,000 patients who had bypasses at Duke University Medical Center from 1996 through 2005. It found that 6.4 percent of patients who were given Trasylol died within 30 days of the surgery, a rate nearly 2.5 times higher than patients who got another drug or who received no treatment for bleeding. The second study, financed by Bayer, looked at about 78,000 patients nationwide from 2003 to 2006. After adjusting for other factors, the researchers found the risk of death was 64 percent higher in the Trasylol group than in those taking a comparison drug.
