Pre Operative Questions

Do I need to stop aspirin before the operation?

Stop aspirin 5 days prior to surgery

Many people take an aspirin daily as a blood thinner. Aspirin has an effect on platelets in the blood, which slows clot formation. Taking aspirin can around the time of your operation can increase the risk of postoperative bleeding. For this reason, the standard protocol for elective surgery is to stop aspirin five days before the operation. This is what we most commonly recommend. In some cases, we will allow patients to stay on aspirin around the time of surgery for very specific reasons. We will let you know if this is the case. 

Start again the day after surgery

You can start the aspirin again the morning after surgery. 

Do I need medical clearance before surgery?

Nope

For patients having their operation at the Norman Parathyroid Center, the answer is “no”. No you do not need medical clearance from your doctor or your cardiologist before you have surgery with us. We have done this operation so many times that we do not require medical clearance before we operate on you. It usually takes about 20 minutes to do the operation and the blood loss is typically less than a thimble-full (virtually bloodless in most cases). This is extremely well tolerated and not a big stress to your body or your heart.

We do not get EKG’s on our patients pre-operatively, or require you to get blood testing done before your operation. We have lots of blood work on you already (that’s how we know you have a parathyroid problem!). Many of our patients have MANY other medical problems, but remember, many of those other medical problems are either caused by or made worse by the parathyroid problem. We operate on “sick” people every day and they do just fine.

Of course every patient is a unique individual, but we operate on people over the age of 80 virtually every day, and people in their 90’s about once a week. These kind of problems are not an issue if you have a quick, simple, small operation.