Thousands of lives a year could be saved worldwide if a cheap drug was given to accident victims, according to a major new study.

The study of over 20,000 patients published today in The Lancet shows that tranexamic acid, which is already given in surgery to reduce bleeding, significantly lowers the risk of death following trauma. The risk of death due to bleeding was 15% lower in the patients receiving the drug, which study author Ian Roberts says costs around £6 per patient.

“It’s probably one of the cheapest ways to save a life there ever is,” Roberts, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told reporters.

In total, 10,096 trauma patients received tranexamic acid and 10,115 received placebo. Mortality in the first group was 14.5% vs 16.0% in the placebo group. Death due to bleeding was 4.9% vs 5.7%. There were also no apparent increases in adverse events that might be expected from giving a drug that inhibits the breakdown of clots.

“Tranexamic acid safely reduced the risk of death,” says Roberts. “It’s cheap, it’s easy to use and it could save thousands of lives a year.”

He says a ‘back of the envelope’ calculation based on World Health Organisation statistics on deaths suggests that nearly 74,000 lives could be saved every year if tranexamic acid was routinely used worldwide. The team behind the study – called CRASH-2 – are pushing for the WHO to put tranexamic acid on its list of essential medicines.

Tranexamic acid, explains Jerrold Levy of Emory University, in a comment piece accompanying the paper, interferes with the process of fibrinolysis, the breakdown of clots. The drug interferes with a key enzyme involved in this process and, in turn, reduces bleeding.