Surgery advice.

[carnation]

Hi. I am having a minor op on my foot on 9th May, with a pre op blood test on 3rd May.

I have never had surgery before, so I have a couple of questions you might be able to help me with.

Firstly, my TSH is very suppressed - told by GP I was over medicated but I ignored him, as you do, as I feel well. Are they going to go ballistic when they see this and send me home. If likely what can I do to raise it a little without plunging into the hypo abyss again😭

I have managed to get referred to someone who sees very few NHS patients, so I am treading carefully, cannot afford to mess this up as the alternative is to pay!

Secondly, is a general anaesthetic going to have an adverse effect due to my thyroid issue. If likely is there anything I can do to make things better.

Sorry for long post, thanks for reading.

[spongecat]

I'm not a doctor but generally if you are on "permanent" medication the only person who might have a vested interest is the anaesthetist.

Pre-op bloods are generally for cross matching purposes but they should also ask you if you are on medication too. You could then pipe up does the anaesthetist need to be advised...do you lay off a dose prior to GA considering you will be nil by mouth and if they suggest taking your meds is OK, you might have to take them with water with plenty of time to spare before liquids nil by mouth kicks in. I honestly don't know with thyroid meds but (for example) it would be very important to tell doctors if you were on warfarin, for obvious reasons!

The only way you can be over-medicated is if your T3 and T4 is over the upper limits, once you are on levo and or T3 treatment the TSH is pretty irrelevant unless it escalates in level.

[humanbean]

Do you have problems with low B12? If you do ask the anesthetist to please avoid using nitrous oxide.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/825...

anesthesiology.pubs.asahq.o...

sciencedirect.com/science/a...

[carnation in reply to humanbean]

Thank you for those links, they are interesting. I have not had B12 checked recently, at the last test it was at the top of the range, I was taking sublingual tablets daily. I have reduced to alternate days but it may be sensible to return to daily for the next couple of weeks.

[humanbean in reply to carnation]

Good idea - and continue for a month after surgery as well.