I wanted to make this continue this topic because it seems that with each passing week, we find out more and more about the dangers and side effects caused by Ozempic.
Recently, a press release from the Magazine Stat, reported on the findings from the American Academy of Anesthesiologist warning that, if you have any surgery planned, you are required to stop taking Ozempic or any of the drugs in the GLP1 class. If you are taking the daily version of the drug, you will have to stop taking it at least two days before your surgery. If you are taking the weekly dose, you will have to skip that week before your surgery.
This is because GLP1 medications drastically slows down the gastric emptying time, which means when you eat a meal while taking a GLP1 agonists medication, that food stays in your stomach much longer than it normally would, almost as if you had a terrible gut condition like gastroparesis.
Surgeons and anesthesiologists are finding patients that did a fast at midnight before the morning of their surgery still have stomachs full of food due to the slowing of gastric emptying time caused by Ozempic or other GLP1 Agonist’s drugs.
In this class of drugs, Ozempic is the most popular one which you have heard of, but there are other drugs in this class, for instance Bydureon, Byetta, Rybelsus, Tanzeum, Rulicity and Victoza.
If you are taking any of these drugs daily or weekly, you will need to talk to your surgeon if you have a surgery coming up. You will need to discuss how many days you have to avoid the drug before your surgery because the danger of having undigested food in your stomach during surgery. Undigested food can lead to reflux aspiration which cause aspiration pneumonia. This happens if you aspirate the contents of our stomach up into your lungs; symptoms include coughing up blood or puss, shortness of breath and extreme tiredness. During a procedure, it can cause terrible surgical complications and life-threatening conditions.
If you have a surgery coming up and you are taking any of these medications, please let your surgeon know, so they can tell you how many days to be off them before the surgery.
As these drugs grow in popularity the more information comes out about the dangers and side effects so we will most likely be doing more parts to this topic, stay tuned.