the watchman?

[Heart-o]

anyone used the Watchman surgery to prevent blood clots?

Can Eliquis be replaced with nattokinaise?

[EngMac]

This topic has been discussed several times. Search for this and you may find some posts.

[JefferyW]

I’ve had a Watchman fitted as part of a medical trial at Oxford University Hospitals cardiac research unit. I now just take 75mg gastro resistant aspirin daily and no other anticoagulants. Had it fitted 18months ago and no ill effects. Being monitored every 6 months as part of research programme.

[MiniMeGreen]

There is an interesting paper discussing this and other options to minimize the stroke risk ahajournals.org/doi/full/10...

However, the MiniMaze procedure is even better, it had so far been 0.25 in over 2000 patients vs 2.3 for Watchman and 2.6 events /100 patient years for Warfarin which is about a tenth of the stroke risk for those other treatments.

Nattokinase is a very interesting question, will be answered separately, though I would already state that it can't replace apixaban yet.

[MiniMeGreen]

Nattokinase belong to the fermented healthy foods of East Asia and it has definitely very positive effects in people when eaten e.g. like a fermented soybean product.

It has been used mostly as additional treatment after a stroke and has been proven helpful. However, there are no good studies in humans, neither on the stroke risk prevention nor the possibly best dose and its safety.

There is a study in rabbits ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl... simulating this and it showed that though Nattokinase is working, it's only comparable to Aspirin when given relatively high doses. Nattokinase (500 mg/kg) had about the same efficacy as aspirin (30 mg/kg), take a person with lets say 75 kg, that would be an aspirin dose of 2250 mg daily. This dose is prone to cause bleeding problems, so an equivalent dose of Nattokinase may be likely also dangerous.

There are also some case reports on patients who took both ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl... Potential drug interactions and contraindications to the use of NK in humans are not currently known. There is one report of a patient concurrently using aspirin and NK (400 mg daily), experiencing an acute cerebellar haemorrhage (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/183.... In addition, multiple microbleeds were demonstrated on brain magnetic resonance images suggesting that NK may increase risk of intracerebral haemorrhage in patients who have bleeding-prone cerebral microangiopathy and are taking aspirin concurrently. In another report, a patient developed a thrombus in a mechanical valve after nearly a year of NK use without warfarin and underwent a successful repeat valve replacement ( pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/255.... Use of multiple drugs concurrently is common in patients with CVD. Therefore, it is particularly important to elucidate the potential possible interactions of NK with other drugs acting on the cardiovascular system.

So whether you are taking apixaban or similar or warfarin or just aspirin, adding nattokinase by yourself could harm you. If are not taking any blood thinners than nattokinase in “Japanese amounts” is rather recommended though its interactions with other drugs are not yet clear enough.

[riffjack846]

In regard to Natto as a replacement for Eliquis I have to emphatically say NO. I tried replacing my Eliquis with Natto and Serrapeptase back in 2018 and I had 2 Isechemic events. I have since been taking Eliquis and will probably take it the rest of my life. Strokes ain't fun.