A research made public on Tuesday has revealed that as many as 20% of the total patients in the US who undergo kidney dialysis, a method to unblock arteries, are given the wrong drug for blood clots, thereby hiking the chances of significant bleeding manifolds.

The researchers have stressed that this directly means that doctors across the country choose to ignore the warnings detailed on drug labels, often putting their patients at a risk of serious harm, and even death.

"The results of this study illustrate the problem of medication errors in the United States, as well as the need to make patient safety a priority on the health care agenda", the research, led by Dr. Thomas Tsai of the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center, shares.

In the US, it has been estimated that over 100,000 deaths are caused every year due to wrong prescription of drugs to patients, which actually end up harming them.

For the sake of research, data collected from 829 U. S. hospitals on 22,778 dialysis patients between January 2004 and August 2008 was considered, and it was discovered that 22.3%, or 5,084, of all the patients had been prescribed the wrong blood thinner.

Details of the study have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.