Can I safely stop Eliquis and use Baby Asprin instead?

@kndaustin71 I think you meant anti-coagulation? I brought up Tylenol because some reading take it for another purpose in favour of aspirin, and that Tylenol brings its own set of cautions. For anti-platelet purposes, Tylenol has no bearing, but for pain control it does. My thinking was along the line of taking metoprolol for rate control, but it is also used for incipient hypertension. Or, atorvastatin that so many take for control of cholesterol, but it also has uses as an anti-inflammatory at the same time (not prescribed for that, but helps to mitigate it).

@kndaustin71 it’s anti-coagulation not coagulation you when using anti-platelet drugs.

Exactly! Stopping might be a dangerous idea!

Everyone's cases are different. In my case, I had an AFib event last March at a time that I was under a lot of stress and had a lot of pain due to a knee surgery I needed. Due to these two things, I wasn't getting much sleep. When my cardiologist's office called and told me my pacemaker indicated I'd had an AFib event and told me what could have caused it, I asked if the stress, pain, and lack of sleep could have been the reason I had that event since nothing he mentioned was applicable to me. He told me yes, stress, pain, and lack of sleep definitely could have triggered the AFib, but he wanted me to go on Eliquis. Which I did. Over the next several months, I did a lot of research and discovered that typically, Eliquis is started after a second episode, not the first one. Along the way, I changed doctors. My new cardiologist told me that he wanted me to finish out the prescription I had and he would watch my pacemaker reports to see if I'd had any more AFib events. He said that if he didn't see any more AFib, he would stop my Eliquis prescription. When no more AFib was detected, he told me to stop taking Eliquis and he did not renew the prescription. He didn't give me any instructions for stopping. I took my last Eliquis pill in September, and haven't had any bad reactions. So you know, my new cardiologist is nationally known and very thorough. As I said at the beginning, this is just what I experienced. If you think or even just want to know for sure if you can stop taking Eliquis, I strongly recommend that you get a second opinion from another cardiologist, perhaps at a different hospital. Although I believed that my first cardiologist had jumped the gun in prescribing this to me, I would never have quit it unless another cardiologist said it was okay. I hope this helps!

@jenatsky Thank you!

I can understand your concern in taking Eliquis. Lots of documentation re side effects. With that said, absolutely do no stop it on your own would be my advice. Involve your cardiologist, hematologist reviewing the need to be on it. Then get a second opinion.

NO. If it were "safe" doctors would be prescribing aspirin instead.

@vbpets Exactly. You must have a solid grasp of your own real risk. It's always strictly a person choice, but the wisest of us learn all about our risk of thromboembolism for us as individuals with our medical history before arguing or simply stopping with a unilateral decision. It is because so many AF patients don't have symptoms that they can't possibly know when their last AF episode was or even if they're currently (still) fibrillating. They would have to use a wearable or blood pressure monitor with graphic ECG display to both count beats and to visually assess the waveform of the PQRST.

@gloaming

My cardiologist has told me that afib rarely really goes away once it has started, even with the prescribed meds to try to control it. When I remember my relative and the results of their continual small strokes, I gratefully use Eliquis and have for 5 years. Not so happy with what I have to pay for it, though.

@methel Yes, the variability in AF management and experience is astounding. Some have one episode and then claim to be free of AF for the rest of their lives, where others begin to have more aggressive bouts of it lasting days, weeks, and then suddenly it stops. For a while. The anti-arrhythmic drugs do work well for some people...if they can tolerate them and their side-effects (if they have side effects...some patients don't notice any change except that their AF subsides). The literature is clear and universal (notwithstanding the claims of some popular book-writing cardiologists who talk about a 'cure' for AF): the disorder is progressive, and the longer one is in AF, the longer one tends to be in AF. AF begets AF. And the heart in AF begins to deteriorate over weeks and months. So, that is why the cardiologist field has begun to claim that a catheter ablation is the gold standard of care now....and to get an ablation early before the disorder progresses to more intractable stages.