Heparin

Bit of a personal question lol I came off this morning at 91.3kg. I take one mini aspirin per day. I think they are 100mg.

Sorry if I offended you by that question…,talking about weights in dialysis living has been a norm for me, espcially after doing it for over 20 years now, but I understand, its okay…you don’t have to answer your weight.

Anyway, for a person about my size I take 2 baby asprin(86mg ea.) prior to treatment or one regular asprin every 3 days…

Does aspirin in place of heparin only work for some ppl with SDD or with other forms of dialysis too? Is aspirin safer than heparin? We are told never to take aspirin only tylenol.

I have not found research articles on that yet, but we all know that asprin and heparin should never be mixed together Both heparin and asprin are Anticoagulants and mixing both will just make your blood very thin which will result in excess bleeding, unless you bleed internally or you’ll have a hard time clotting after dialysis. On the other hand Tylenol doesn’t do that, thats why they say take tylenol.

Everybody’s bodies are different and each one of them will respond differently. The asprin dosage I take may not be the same for others, BUT this has not been tried on Nocturnal yet, unless someone already tried it… :roll:

I have only done this on mostly on Daily-Short…I did try it in-center for about 5 months…

What do you mean by not mixing aspirin and heparin together? I take oral aspirin and use heparin on the machine. Of course, I guess it wouldnt be a good idea to take the full strength aspirin say for a headache or whatever. I am on 100mg a day, just to help stop my fistula stop clotting when I cannulate.

I meant oral asprin, sorry…

I assume your Dr. okayed it so I guess he has it balanced along with your heparin…

You might want to ask him whether its possible to withdraw from heparin and just rely on asprin…don’t do it on your own, ask him about it

Nah I need the heparin, I clot quick

That’s reasonable… :slight_smile:

Gus, Do you rinse back good (no clots) without using heparin? If you compare your in-center treatments without heparin and your home treatments without heparin is their less clotting at home because of the shorter time on machine. You are the only patient I know of who doesn’t use any heparin at all. How did you happen to get to this point?

If you mean rinseback at the end of treatment yes, no heparin at all, not clots, only a few steaks, but that hasn’t affected treatment at all. Pressures have been excellent.

Comparing no heparin in-center and home is a hard one to answer as I only did it five months and during those five months the staff insisted on doing saline flushes every 30min and another staff member insisted using heparin only once a week, so its hard to answer that. However, during those five months the dialyzer did clot once…so the answer may be either yes or no…

To get to the point of using no heparin at all takes careful withdrawal…you need to take your time on withdrawing from it and determine what is the right amount of asprin to sustain a balanced state. Also, instead of using heparin on cannulation I would just use saline.

The whole reason for not using heaprin is allergens/Parabens …somehow my body has developed antibodies against heparin, could be after using heparin for so many years.

I use 1ml of my premixed heparin in a 10ml saline flush, for my venous cannula. It was clotting by the time I flushed it with saline. I get like a line of blood that sticks to the side of the tubing, which was forming a clot. I either had to recannulate, or try to pull the clot out, which was rather time consuming an I just didnt feel safe doing it. So now I hep flush it and the residue is alot less, and doesnt clot.

Gus, I have heard of this heparin resistance thing, not quite sure of the terminology of it. I read something breif about it recently. Its great that you can dialyse without it. The less drugs the better!

Of course, am really happy now that I don’t have to deal with these allergic reactions… :slight_smile:

Anyway, you can read more about it here…

Don’t forget Amber, Gus is running a lot faster on his nightly NxStage run, than we are on our slow o’nite runs! :slight_smile: Blood probably can’t clot at 250kph :lol: zooooooooooo-ooom!! :lol:
I learnt not to panic about blood while training @ the unit. I’ve had it fire over my head, from my upper arm fistula. Had the tray full too, with Lisa (nurse) frantically mopping :lol:
I get the machine into disinfect before taking out the cannulas, then use its clock to count off 10mins for each. But sometimes it will restart from one or the other. NO pools on my desk or the floor for some time now tho! :roll: :smiley:

I was there that day you filled up the tray bear LOL Sounded pretty scary!!
I took over 10 minutes to stop bleeding the other day, thats after me saying it takes me about 6 minutes to stop :oops:
Just spent the day in emergency, my favourite place!! lol Was sitting outside starbucks having lunch waiting for my tablets, and my arms and legs started going weak. Was going to go home, but lucky I didnt…my potassium was 6.2 :shock:

Pierre, when you say 1 ml, how many units is it? Here, we get 5 ml bottles which are 25000 units - or 5000 units/ml.

I don’t work in units for heparin, but it says on the bottle that 1 ml is equal to 1000 units.
Pierre

I give Ralph (hubby) bolus in begginning and .58 every hour.
Ralph also takes fish oil and that helps with the keeping blood thin enough to reduce the amount of Heperin needed, and it is natural.
Pat :lol:

How much fish oil does he take? Is it doctor reccomended?

Interesting, which fish oil brand?

A brand that was recomended to me by a home program friend is Spectrum Omega 3 Norwegian Fish Oil. The co. has a website with more info. Years back I read a few articles on fish oil. Supposedly it can keep the access fluid and other benefits. My neph at the time did not feel it was a proven thing, but felt it could not hurt. One of my nurses uses it for herself. I would like to hear an update on it’s benifits and dosage amounts.