Do You Have Heart Caths While Sedated?

[Terese Tuohey]

I don’t have to stop Coumadin for regular dental checkups.  My Hematologist told me not to stop it for a colonoscopy either.  He said it was safer to keep the Coumadin up at a therapeutic level for that procedure than not – at least for me. I did have a colonoscopy, did not stop the Coumadin, and had no problems.

Generally, the fear is that since the Coumadin thins out your blood, if there is any cutting to be done in a procedure, you might not stop the bleeding as quickly as you could without the Coumadin in your bloodstream.

[jen-cueva]

Hi @tervo, thanks for sharing your experiences with Coumadin and other procedures. I’m grateful that you had the colonoscopy without any problems. Because I do know that is often on the list of things to hold a day or two before mine. However, I haven’t been on it in years. I was only on blood thinners early in my diagnosis.

I’m anemic, so it was not helping me much, and my hematologist took me off after speaking with my PH team.