anticoagulants and stomach bug

[DIB69]

I had a dodgy tummy causing diarrhoea this morning and did spent the day avoiding food and sticking to water and tea. Fortunately by evening the griping had gone and I was able to eat something prior to taken my Rivaroxaban. It made me ponder, however, what to do if we with AF suffer a longer lasting bout of diarrhoea and sickness and it proves impossible to take our anticoags?

[Buffafly]

That’s why I changed to Apixaban - you can take with just water. I also had far less stomach/bowel problems after stopping Rivaroxaban!

[CDreamer in reply to Buffafly]

Me too.

[DIB69 in reply to CDreamer]

Thank you this is a change worth discussing with my GP

[BobD Volunteer]

Allways a difficult problem. I put up a pinned post some time ago (it is still there) explaining what to do if you forget to take a dose which can be helpful if your stomach problems are short lived. If you can't keep food down there seems little point in taking rivaroxaban as we know that this drug needs a meal with some fat to be properly absorbed. Really best advice is to stay well hydrated (if you have no dioralite use plain boiled water with some salt and sugar stired in) and resume normal medication as soon as things settle.

[DIB69 in reply to BobD]

Thank you for your advice.

[CDreamer]

I had constant sickness and diarrhoea during COVID and couldn’t eat anything for 3 weeks, other than small sips of smoothie - only thing that I could take was liquidised Water Melon but I did on the whole manage to take all of my meds and enough must have metabolised as I came through ok.

Missing 24 hours I should think unlikely to raise your risk that high as the half life of Rivaroxaban is 24 hours anyway. If you had to have a surgical procedure they would ask you to not take so I have never worried about it - I worried far more about my other meds as not taking them affected my everyday life.

[DIB69 in reply to CDreamer]

Thank you, your response has reassured me as have all the others. I am very grateful to you.

[Bagrat]

If you needed surgery or other interventions that might cause bleeding, you'd be advised to stop anticoagulation any way so I would try not to concern yourself, just drink plenty when you can and move about regularly, whether you feel like it or not. Tummy upsets usually guarantee this anyway!!!