Reta and post-surgery discussion

[LlamaWorm]

I've been on Reta for a month now. I'm down a good 20 lbs which I am ecstatic about. I have a major surgery coming up in July and my doctor has told me to stop taking my GLP. They don' t know which one i'm on and only asked if it was compounded to which I said yes. I have to stop one week prior to the surgery and wasn't really told when I can start back up. I know part of the worry is slow digestion going into surgery and anesthesiology.

My question is how many have started back up AFTER surgery and how long did you wait? My only real concern is the oxy that i'll be on and if it takes longer to digest and causing issues?

Thoughts and or experiences?

 

[lessthanhalf]

The concern is the slow gastric emptying making stomach acid stay in your stomach for longer increasing risks of aspirating some into your lungs during anaesthesia. Weirdly most studies so far seem to not show any increased risks of post operative pneumonia, so guidelines seem to vary from place to place. There are lots of studies showing better outcomes in patients on glp drugs with surgery and a few showing worse ones, but overall starting it up again soon is unlikely to have negative effects, but I would suggest you wait till out of hospital.

I assume you mean oxycodeine for oxy as a post surgery painkiller? I take tramadol for chronic gut pain from UC/IBS and GLP's absolutely slow absorption of drugs down quite a lot, does not really change the total absorbed dose over time, but does mean it will take longer to start working if taken orally, sometimes by a few hours. Mainly as the tablets just sit in the stomach not getting absorbed for a while before they finally get moved on to the intestines where you can start absorbing them due to the same slow gastric emptying. If you are taking them on a regular schedule it should make no real difference but it might be an issue if you are only taking them once pain gets bad as it will take longer to start working. But GLP drugs make you less likely to get addicted to opiates so they have that benefit.