Semaglutide before surgery

The warning, in the label's own words

WEGOVY and OZEMPIC carry this as a numbered warning, and the wording is the same on both except for the product name:

Pulmonary aspiration means stomach contents going into the airway. The detail that makes this a warning rather than a footnote is in the last clause: these people had followed the fasting instructions. The ordinary safeguard did not do what it usually does, because the stomach had not emptied on the usual schedule.^1,2

What the labels admit they cannot tell you

This is the sentence that most pages on this subject leave out, and it is the reason this one prints no rule:

So there is no labeled number of days to stop before a procedure, no labeled longer fast and no labeled dose to skip. If you have read an interval somewhere, it did not come from these documents. Anesthesia teams do publish their own guidance and it changes; yours is the one that applies to you, and telling them is what puts you in it.^1,2

What to do with this before a procedure

The labels give one instruction and it is the same on both: instruct patients to inform their healthcare providers prior to any planned surgeries or procedures. In practice that means saying it to the surgeon, to the anesthesia team and to whoever books the appointment, because the person who plans your fasting may not be the person holding your medication list.^1,2

Say which product and which dose, and when your last one was. The WEGOVY schedule and the OZEMPIC schedule are where those numbers are, and the missed-dose page covers what the labels say if a week gets skipped, which is a question that may come up afterwards. If restarting raises a tolerability question, the side-effect timing guide gives trial context to discuss with the prescriber.

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