Long term use of Clopidogrel causing blood in urine

[retro46]

Hello,

My Mum has been taking Clopidogrel for approx 10 years - Recently she has been suffering with a lot of blood in her urine along with urgency to urinate.

She was told by the Doctors that she has bladder cancer and is booked in for surgery so she has stopped taking Clopidogrel for 4 days. The blood in the urine has stopped and her urine is clear and has been for a couple of days now.

I understand that a side effect of Clopidogrel is blood in urine and I'm just wondering if this medication has caused this because I have seen no proof of bladder cancer from the Doctors and bladder cancer was diagnosed before any tests were carried out.

I'd greatly appreciate any advise with this and if anyone has suffered from the same it would be good to hear your story.

Thanks

[Lowerfield_no_more]

The main objective of anti-coagulants and anti-platelet medications is to prevent blood clots forming. So if there is an internal lesion of some sort that is bleeding or going to bleed (as in an upcoming medical procedure) then stopping that medication makes bleeding less likely to happen even to the point of stopping the bleeding. But I would have thought it unlikely that your mother would have been offered 'surgery' without any prior testing as you have indicated unless there was some some degree of certainty from the symptoms presented that there is a possibility of the presence of bladder cancer, unless the 'surgery' you referred to is a cystoscopy procedure which will be used to view the bladder wall and any abnormal growths removed and then sent for biopsy to confirm whether they are benign or malignant. And based on that there will be a multi-disciplinary review of what if any further action is necessary, including further tests and investigations such as an MRI and subsequent appropriate treatment. Nonetheless if you or your mother are in any doubt about what is going to happen, a chat with a Macmillan nurse might be helpful. Hope this helps.

[retro46 in reply to Lowerfield_no_more]

Hi, thank you for the reply.

Just so I understand, by stopping the medication, it may not have necessarily stopped the bleeding, the bleeding could just be clotting. Am I understanding you correctly?

Thanks

[Lowerfield_no_more in reply to retro46]

As I understand it by stopping the clopidogrel, any lesion is less likely to bleed as the body's normal healing process in the form of local clotting is allowed to take over. I can't really say any more except that I respectfully suggest you and your mother should perhaps put your trust in the specialist health professionals who have so far seen her, and try to dissociate the effect of clopidogrel on bladder and urinary tract bleeding from the possible bladder cancer diagnosis, which is what I guess the health professionals appear to have done. And be aware that not all cell changes are malignant, and that can include those within the bladder, some 'growths' are just benign. I hope all goes well.

[retro46 in reply to Lowerfield_no_more]

Thank you, I appreciate your advise.

Best Wishes