Took too much Warfrin

[Billyb5t5]

My normal dose of warfarin is 10 mg at bedtime. I mistakenly took another dose of 10mg a half hour lare. Making it 20 mg. Should I eat a lot of dark greens in the morning. Or should I call urgent care?

[dojurols]

I would call urgent care and get advice from them, especially about the greens.

[pottypete1]

As you are on a very high dose in the first place a wise course of action would be to call a urgent medical care for professional medical advice.

Pete

[Hidden]

Without doubt get in touch with A&E straight away or doctor. That is a high dose to duplicate

[jeanjeannie50]

Yes, I agree with the others seek medical advice now.

Please let us know how you get on.

Jean

[Billyb5t5]

I called Urgent Care late Friday night. The on call Doctor said there wasn’t anything that could be done. He only advised not to take my Saturday nights dose. Then just resume my normal dose on Sunday.

Thank You for your reply Jean

[Hidden]

Try not to worry Billy but do everything possible to avoid banging your head and limbs. Should you be unfortunate and accidently hit your head, you should seriously consider going to A&E. As I'm sure you know, it's internal bleeds that are the potential problem.....best of lock.

[Gmc54]

For the future, it's a good idea to put your daily dose in one of those pill boxes with the separate segments for each day. I use one of those, and set an alarm on my phone.

[MarkS]

One of the advantages of warfarin is that missed or doubled doses have relatively little effect as long as you correct it within 24 hours. I assume you've missed your Sat night dose so you should be fine. But I would do two things:

1. Get a Coaguchek or similar so you can monitor your own INR

2. Write the day of the week you are due to take you pills on the foil packet. So I take 9mg p.d. (1 pink, 1 blue, 1 brown). I write the day on the pink strip above each tablet (M, Tu, W, etc), and so far haven't missed a dose for more than 24 hours after 9 years. In your case, presumably you take 2x5mg so just write the day against each row, assuming your foils are two across.

[ILowe]

MarkS is right about this advantage of warfarin. Doubling a dose once might have little effect. If you know you have doubled, then the doctor advising to miss the next day in compensation is roughly right. Looked at over a week -- as many older regimes did -- then this evens out but the method of the doctor risks promoting swings.

I think a more subtle approach would be to compensate gently, but compensate by about 70-80% over 2-3 days. In your shoes I would have taken 5mg the next day, then 8mg then your usual 10mg (so using up 7mg of the overdose). If I knew my INR was running high I would compensate more. eg 5, 8, 9, then 10 (so using up 8mg of the overdose). This is because some of the extra warfarin will be used up, so you cannot do a 1 to 1 removal/compensation. Think of a pendulum. An extra move to the left compensated by a equal pull to the right is a sure way to create swings -- which can be very difficult to handle with dosing.