Can Levothyroxine be swallowed whole?

I have hypothyroid and take .75 of Levothyroxine each morning.  It is a tiny pill.  I was instructed to crush all meds until 2 months post op.  All my vitamins and supplements are chewables but I am supposed to wait until 2 weeks post op to start them.  In the hospital they gave me a Pepsid pill that was a little bigger than the Levo.  They didn't cru**** just had me swallow it.  I am thinking it would be ok to swallow the Levo also.  Of course I forgot to ask the surgeon and will call them Monday but any thoughts until then?

I'm on levothyroxine I have no problem swallowing it.  Yea just call the surgeon but you should be ok.

I crushed my levo for the first 4 weeks, have been swallowing it ever since. 

I crushed it for the first two weeks. It's not a big deal. Just hit it with the blunt end of a utensil a couple of times. It doesn't taste bad like other medications.

I can to imagine why someone would tell you that you need to crush such a tiny pill! Do you how infinitesimal the chances are of it getting stuck? A "stuck" pull gets stuck in the esophagus which is NOT touched during any WLS procedure. Even if there is significant swelling along the suture line of the sleeve or pouch at the end nearest the esophagus, the esophagus is unlikely to be affected and there is therefore no medical reason to crush pills unless they are large.  A pill will not get "stuck" in the stoma. EVen if it blocks the stoma opening, it will simply sit in the liquid you swallowed it with until it dissolves.

Even in the very rare case where there IS esophogeal swelling, the worst thing that happens if a pill gets stuck is that you have to slowly sip water until it dissolves enough to pass... 

My surgeon did not require any pills to be cut or crushed, and neither do any of the three Bariatric surgeons in the office that I work for. My surgeon admitted that -- like the instructions some surgeons give to sip an ounce of water every so many minutes -- it is mostly to eliminate extra work on the office staff's end with a limited potential benefit to the occasional patient who migth have trouble.  (She is also the one who admitted to me that some surgeons intentionally scare their patients with the nonsense about carbonation stretching the pouch in order to convince them to give up drinking diet soda (rather than just explaining the legitimate reasons to not drink it), and pointed out the hypocrisy of "forbidding" soda because of caffine and/or acid but permitting coffee (which so many surgeons drink themselves).)

Many of us didn't cut or crush a single pill even the night of surgery and never had a problem with any pills getting stuck. Some surgeons just give a blanket "crush everything" because it is easier on THEM than to have to field the very occasional call from someone who swallowed a pill (usually something oblong rather than round anyway) that did get stuck.

I would certainly encourage you to talk to your surgeon about it, if possible (you probably won't get to talk to anybody but a nurse, though), but I would also ask him explain WHY he feels it is necessary to crush pills at all (other than giant ones, of course). Chances are he will admit that there really isn't any reason to do so, that it is simply a standard "precaution" (which, again, makes HIS life easier, not yours).

Lora

I was never instructed to crush pills.  I take Levo and have always swallowed it whole as well as all the other vitamins.

I take synthroid for under active thyroid and have never crushed it up. The nurse gave them to me whole while I was in the hospital after surgery. I've never been told to crush any pills for that matter. 

I'm on the same dose and was told for the first 4 weeks I could swallow whole any pills that were smaller than a pencil head eraser, which my levo definitely was. I hated crushing pills, so my bigger ones I just split so every piece I swallowed was smaller than an eraser.

I took pills the same day as surgery without crushing. 

Of course, perhaps there's some reason for your particular case, but I've never had to crush any pill of any size.

I was never told to crush anything.  Other than getting some huge magnesium pills stuck a few times when I was taking too many at once (ow), I did fine...

Audrey