The one-week rule, why omega-3, vitamins and red ginseng are named specifically, what patients routinely forget to disclose, and why prescription medication is discussed rather than stopped.
Most patients arrive at a pre-operative instruction expecting it to be about prescription drugs, and are surprised to find the named items are things bought without a prescription. Omega-3. Vitamins. Red ginseng. Products taken for years precisely because they are considered harmless.
They are named because they are the ones that go undeclared. A patient asked whether they take any medication will say no, accurately, while taking three supplements every morning that bear on how much they bleed during an operation.
This page sets out the one-week rule and what it applies to, why those three items are named rather than left to a general instruction, what else is worth disclosing that patients routinely omit, and why prescription medication is discussed with the clinic rather than stopped on your own initiative. Fasting on the day of surgery is a separate instruction with a separate page.
Omega-3, vitamin supplements and red ginseng are stopped one week before surgery. The reason is that each can affect bleeding and clotting, and an operation is easier to control when they are out of the system. Prescription medication is a different matter entirely: it is disclosed and discussed with the clinic, and any decision to interrupt it is made with the doctor who prescribed it rather than by you. Disclose everything you take, including items you do not think of as medication, and do so before you travel rather than on the morning.
On this page
- The one-week rule
- Why these three items are named
- Why a week, and not a day
- What patients routinely forget to disclose
- Prescription medication is discussed, not stopped
- How to prepare the disclosure
- The traveller's version of this problem
- What happens if you forget
- Restarting afterwards
- Questions patients ask
The one-week rule
The instruction Edition gives is specific rather than general. Omega-3, vitamin supplements and red ginseng are stopped one week before surgery.
The value of naming items rather than issuing a general caution is that a general caution does not work. Told to stop anything that might affect bleeding, a patient has to decide what qualifies, and almost nobody classifies a fish oil capsule as a medicine. Told to stop omega-3, they stop omega-3.
The list is the clinic's instruction, and it is not a complete inventory of everything in the world that could matter. That is what the disclosure is for. You tell the clinic what you take; the clinic tells you what to do about it. Adding items to the stop list yourself, or removing them, replaces a clinical judgment with a guess.
Why these three items are named
Each has a specific relationship to bleeding, and each is unusually widely taken.
Omega-3. Fish oil and related preparations affect platelet behaviour, which is the first stage of clotting. Taken daily, often at high doses, and rarely mentioned when a patient is asked about medication, because it is bought in a supermarket.
Vitamin supplements. The concern is not vitamins in food. It is concentrated supplementation, and vitamin E in particular, which at supplemental doses influences clotting. Multivitamin products frequently contain more than the label prominence suggests, and combination products stack several relevant ingredients at once.
Red ginseng. Widely used in Korea and among Korean-heritage patients abroad, taken as a health tonic rather than as a drug, and consequently almost never disclosed. It has a recognised effect on platelet aggregation.
What all three share is not potency. It is invisibility. A patient who would certainly mention a blood thinner will not mention the ginseng extract they have taken every morning for a decade.
Why bleeding matters during facial surgery is worth a sentence, because the instruction reads as bureaucratic until you know. An operative field that bleeds more is a field the surgeon can see less well, and the work is fine, close to structures that matter, and dependent on visibility. It also bears on bruising and swelling afterwards, which is the part a patient experiences directly.
Why a week, and not a day
The interval is set by how the effect wears off, not by how long the substance stays in the bloodstream.
Platelets circulate for several days and are replaced continuously. Where a substance has altered the behaviour of the platelets currently in circulation, normal function returns as those platelets are replaced — a process measured in days rather than hours. A week allows for that turnover with margin.
Stopping the day before therefore achieves very little. The substance is gone; the platelets it acted on are still there. This is the single most useful thing to understand about the instruction, because it explains why a patient who stops on the way to the airport has not complied with it in any meaningful sense.
It also explains why stopping earlier than a week is not a problem, and why a patient who realises late should still stop immediately and say so. Four days is not seven, but it is considerably more than none, and it lets the clinic make the decision with accurate information.
What patients routinely forget to disclose
When asked what they take, patients answer the question they think is being asked — prescriptions from a doctor. The following are all worth stating explicitly.
- Supplements of every kind, including those taken for hair, skin, joints, sleep, or general health, and including anything described as natural.
- Herbal preparations and traditional remedies, including teas taken medicinally and tonics taken by habit.
- Over-the-counter painkillers, particularly anti-inflammatory tablets taken for headaches or period pain, and the dose and frequency.
- Weight-loss and appetite products, whether prescribed, purchased online, or obtained abroad.
- Anything injected or applied for cosmetic purposes, including recent injectables, with approximate dates.
- Contraception and hormone preparations.
- Alcohol intake, described honestly rather than conservatively.
- Smoking or vaping, including occasional use.
- Anything you stopped recently, and when you stopped it.
Two more categories are worth their own line. Allergies — to medicines, to plasters and adhesives, to latex, to anaesthetic agents, and any family history of a reaction to anaesthesia. And previous reactions of any kind: a bad experience with a dental anaesthetic is relevant information, not a triviality.
Nobody is assessing your habits. The history is needed because it changes what happens on the day.
Prescription medication is discussed, not stopped
This is the most important distinction on this page, and the one most often collapsed.
Supplements are stopped on the clinic's instruction. Prescription medication is disclosed and discussed, and any change to it involves the doctor who prescribed it. The two are handled differently because the risks run in opposite directions.
Stopping a supplement carries essentially no cost. Stopping a prescribed medicine can carry a substantial one, and the cost is often not obvious to the person taking it. Anticoagulants, cardiac medication, medication for diabetes, thyroid replacement, psychiatric medication, immunosuppressants and steroids all have consequences on withdrawal that have nothing to do with surgery and everything to do with the condition being treated.
So the sequence is: disclose everything, well in advance; the clinic identifies anything that bears on the operation; where an interruption is being considered, it is coordinated with your prescribing doctor. A patient who stops their own medication a week before flying, meaning to be helpful, has created a problem nobody asked for and may not know about until the day.
Bring the packaging or a written list rather than working from memory. Generic names differ between countries, brand names differ more, and a photograph of a box is worth several minutes of description.
How to prepare the disclosure
The practical version of all of this takes about ten minutes and is best done well before you travel.
Empty the cupboard where you keep tablets onto a table, including the supplements, the tonics, and the box of painkillers at the back. Photograph the packaging so that the ingredient panel is legible. Write a list with the name, the dose, how often you take it, and what it is for — and where you do not know what something is for, write that, because it is useful information in itself.
Send it to the clinic in advance rather than bringing it on the day. Anything that changes the plan is better identified a fortnight out than on the morning, and the answer you receive may itself require a week to act on.
The traveller's version of this problem
Distance adds two complications, both practical.
The instruction has to reach you before you pack. A one-week stop is not something you can act on after landing if your surgery falls in the first days of the trip. This is a reason to complete the medication disclosure early in the enquiry rather than treating it as a formality for the consultation.
Names do not travel well. The same drug carries different brand names in different countries, and a supplement sold as one thing at home may not be recognisable by that name here. Photographs of the ingredient panels solve this in a way that a list of brand names does not.
A third point is easy to miss. Long-haul travel has its own effect on circulation, and patients often add something for it — a supplement recommended for flights, an anti-inflammatory tablet for a swollen ankle, a sleep aid. Anything begun in the week before surgery counts, and something started at the airport is exactly the kind of thing that never gets mentioned.
What happens if you forget
Say so, with the specifics: what it was, the dose, and when you last took it.
What follows depends on the item and the timing, and it is a clinical judgment rather than a fixed rule. Some situations change nothing. Some change the plan for the day. The one thing that reliably makes it worse is not mentioning it, because a decision made without the information cannot account for it.
The same applies to a change in your health between consultation and surgery. A new prescription, a course of antibiotics, an illness, a fever — report it. It may change nothing, and that determination is not yours to make.
Restarting afterwards
Ask when to restart rather than assuming that the operation ends the instruction. The answer is not always the same as the stopping rule reversed, and it can depend on how the surgery went and how you are healing.
Two general points. Anything you were told to stop for bleeding reasons is restarted on advice rather than on the drive home. And anything newly bought during recovery — a painkiller from a pharmacy, a supplement recommended for healing, a herbal preparation offered by a well-meaning relative — is worth a message before you take it, particularly during the early follow-up period when the clinic is actively watching how you are healing.
Questions patients ask
Does the one-week rule apply to a thread lift as well as surgery?
Ask for the instruction that applies to your own procedure rather than generalising from this one. What you take is disclosed in either case, and the clinic will tell you what to do about it.
I stopped my omega-3 three days ago instead of seven. Is that a problem?
Report it with the date you stopped. Three days is not seven, and what that means for your case is a judgment made at the clinic with the actual timing in front of them.
Is vitamin C in a multivitamin included?
The instruction covers vitamin supplements as a category rather than singling out one ingredient. If you are unsure about a specific product, send a photograph of the ingredient panel and ask.
Can I keep taking my blood pressure tablets?
Disclose them and follow the instruction you are given. Prescription medication is discussed with the clinic and, where relevant, with your prescribing doctor. It is not stopped on your own initiative.
What about red ginseng tea rather than capsules?
The item is red ginseng, not the format. Mention it in whatever form you take it.
Do I have to mention filler or threads from years ago?
Yes, with approximate dates. What is already in the tissue changes what the surgeon is working with, and it is a common omission because it does not feel like medication.
Should I stop drinking alcohol as well?
Disclose your intake and follow the instruction you are given. Alcohol has its own effects on bleeding and healing and is not covered by the supplement rule.
Nobody asked me about supplements. Should I raise it anyway?
Yes. Volunteer the full list rather than waiting to be asked about a specific item — that is precisely the gap this instruction exists to close.
About the medical reviewer
Dae-hee Han, MD — Board-Certified Plastic Surgeon (specialist certificate No. 2045, issued 3 March 2014; medical licence 00394, issued 26 February 2009). Master’s degree, Ajou University School of Medicine. Training at the Craniofacial Center, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taiwan (2013), and the IFAAS Mini Fellowship, University of Florida, USA (2016). Three rhinoplasty papers published in SCIE-indexed international journals. More than 4,500 nose surgeries — Dr. Han’s career total from 2017 to 2025, counted from medical records. He carries out consultation, surgery and follow-up personally; fee guidance is given by the clinic’s consultation manager.
Last reviewed: 2026-08-15
Clinic information
Edition Plastic Surgery Clinic & Dermatology
6F, OPUS 407, 407 Gangnam-daero, Seocho-gu, Seoul 06614, Republic of Korea
One minute on foot from Gangnam Station Exit 10
Tel +82-2-591-0100 · editionprs@gmail.com
Consultation hours: Monday to Friday 10:00–19:00 · Saturday 10:00–17:00 · closed Sundays and public holidays
Disclaimer
Individual results may vary. Bleeding, infection, swelling, asymmetry, and scarring can occur. Please decide after a full consultation with a board-certified specialist.
This page is general medical information. It is not a diagnosis, and it does not promise a particular outcome. Surgical fees are given after an in-person consultation.