Having surgery? You may not have to stop GLP1 before.

Anesthesia groups revised their advice on this some time back, yet plenty of places still have not adjusted their routines. It is annoying because stopping and restarting these meds does not feel ideal. A short break versus a longer one may matter less, but it is unclear. Solid studies would help and will probably appear eventually, yet avoiding a pause seems preferable when possible.

Surgery is scheduled this week and the instruction was to stop any GLP-1 a full week prior. When I asked for the reason the reply was simply that it was advised. I am not thrilled with that but I cut the dose by two-thirds anyway.

The piece contains a clear statistical mistake. The reported odds ratio has a confidence interval that crosses 1.0, so the finding is not significant and could reflect either reduced or slightly increased complications. Labeling it an appreciable protective effect does not hold up. That flaw undercuts the overall claim about these drugs helping or not with surgical outcomes.

As someone who works in anesthesia there are still no firm answers. The study the original post links comes from surgeons who have an interest in avoiding cancellations and limiting outside input on case suitability. While aspiration risk is low the consequences can be severe, so caution is reasonable. I am facing my own procedure soon and plan to hold the medication a bit longer than the one-week instruction I received. Each facility sets its own policy and the safest approach is to meet or exceed what they require.

For a colonoscopy earlier this year the instruction was that continuing the medication was fine.

In practice the decision comes down to what the surgeon or anesthesiologist prefers so the team feels the case can proceed safely. Multiple studies suggest retained contents are common yet serious events like aspiration pneumonia do not appear markedly higher. In my own endoscopies and colonoscopies stopping for two weeks before one but not the other still left poor visibility from retained material in both, and bowel prep was also less effective due to reduced motility.