Do antibiotics affect the implant?

Question

iv been on strong antibiotics for about a month now, and i asked my doctor if the implant is affected and he said he wasnt sure? does anyone know if it stops the implant from working?

Answer 1

Nope only the pill is affected

Answer 2

Contraceptive implants are not affected by oral antibiotics as the progesterone passes directly in to the circulation, unlike the pill whose absorption though the gut is altered by the effect of antibiotics on the gut flora and digestion.

Your doctor should have known this already, but a simple glance at the drug data sheet would have told him  this, had he not been too lazy to check!

Answer 3

Hmm... Can you give us some more information? What type of implant is this? When did you have the implant done? What type of antibiotics are they? Are you on any other medications? Will be able to give a more accurate answer this way! Thanks.

OK according to one website mainly TB and epilepsy drugs interfere with the progestogen so not antibiotics specifically.

Also according to the BNF, "the effectiveness of parenteral progestogen-only contraceptives is NOT affected by antibacterials that do not induce liver enzymes". The Implanon implant is a parenteral progestogen-only contraceptive. So you need to find out exactly what antibiotics you took to know whether they would cause a reduced effectiveness, and maybe think about using an alternative method.

So best thing is to go to you doctor, find out exactly what you were prescribed, and then go to your pharmacist who would have in-depth knowledge of how the drugs interact and so would know if it would reduce the effectiveness of the implant.  

Hope that helped!