Unintentionally missing a few days doses of Ibrutinib

[pollyg2016]

Hello, Has anybody unintentionally missed taking doses of Ibrutinib? Have you known any effects? My partner is trying to get his tablets sent from UK to France. they will be sent by courier, but he's concerned in case they are a day late or something. He can't get the tablets in France.

[lankisterguy]

Hi pollyg,

Most patients on Ibrutinib that need any surgery are instructed to pause Ibrutinib for 3 to 5 days before and after the surgery to control excess bleeding. Some of those patients that are early in their treatment ( e.g.: first year) see their nodes swell or may get some minor symptoms return, but typically those problems go away soon after restarting Ibrutinib.

There is some clinical data that suggests that patients that pause don't do quite as well as those that never paused treatment, but the difference is small.

So if you can minimize the number of days skipped - that would be advisable. But the instruction sheets for Ibrutinib say not to increase dosage if pills are not taken for one or more days.

Len

[pollyg2016 in reply to lankisterguy]

Hi Lankisterguy, My partner is not having any surgery or anything like that. If possible, he has absolutely no intention of pausing taking the tablet. I am just thinking of worse case scenario, if there is ever a time when he can't get his tablets straight away for some reason. Thanks for the information.

[DougNZ in reply to pollyg2016]

I stopped Imbruvica for 4 weeks as my liver result went quite high. I had been on Imbruvica for two months. I changed my Cholestoral tablet to Pravastatin and continued on Imbruvica with two tablets a day for almost a year. I had not problems. My doctor upped my in take to 3 tablets a day. He said the more tablets there is more resistance to the MC Lymphoma coming back. My liver is fine now. Cheers

[Spascal in reply to DougNZ]

my fiancé has beenon ibrutinib since june of 2014 . He feels it has saved his life. Now his Dr would like him to be off of it because I guess you can have hemorrhageing . But everytime he gets off he has systems that are making him feel so bad. headaches, stomach pains and terrible fatigue . It is weird because these are also symptoms that you can get while on the pill but he only gets them when they take him off . Has anyone else experienced this .