ABSTRACT
With its approval by the European Medical Evaluation Agency (EMEA) in 1997 and by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1998 for the treatment of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) complicated by thrombosis, lepirudin (Refludan, a registered trademark of the Bayer Group) became the first direct thrombin inhibitor (DTI) available for treating HIT.
