ANZCA Warning on GLP-1 Injections and Peptides Before Surgery

What Did ANZCA Warn About on 5 October 2026?

On 5 October 2026, ahead of National Anaesthesia Day on 16 October, the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) published a notice titled “Warning on weight-loss injections and peptides for patients having surgery”.[1][2] According to the release, ANZCA president Dr Tanya Selak said patients should not assume that GLP-1 receptor agonist injections, or other peptides, are irrelevant to their anaesthesia care.[2]

The notice rests on one pharmacological point: these drugs slow gastric emptying, so food can remain in the stomach even after a patient has fasted. ANZCA said anaesthetists need to know what a patient takes, when it was last taken and why.[2] It also noted that current fasting guidance permits clear liquids until a patient is called to theatre, and that people using GLP-1 drugs may need different instructions.[2]

Why Does Gastric Emptying Matter to Anaesthetists?

Pre-operative fasting exists to leave the stomach close to empty before sedation or general anaesthesia, because stomach contents reaching the airway (pulmonary aspiration) is a recognised, potentially life-threatening complication. ANZCA made the same basic point in a 2023 release on this issue: a fasted patient normally has minimal stomach contents, whereas a full stomach raises the aspiration risk.[3]

Delayed gastric emptying is a long-described pharmacological property of the GLP-1 receptor agonist class, which is why this has been a recurring topic for anaesthesia societies. In the United States, the American Society of Anesthesiologists issued its own consensus-based guidance in 2023 on handling these medicines around procedures, as covered by PBS NewsHour.[4] That guidance is a separate US position, and the ANZCA notice should not be read as endorsing its specifics.

What Is New in the 2026 Notice?

Two things distinguish the October 2026 notice from earlier warnings. First, ANZCA names “other peptides” alongside licensed GLP-1 injections, which reflects the growing volume of unapproved peptide products in circulation. Second, the notice is timed to a public-awareness day rather than a clinical guideline update, so it is a communication to the public rather than a revised technical standard.[2]

The sources we could access do not list individual compounds, trial data or incidence figures. We therefore make no claim about the frequency of any event. A separate Australian regulatory thread is worth noting for context: the Therapeutic Goods Administration has been announcing compliance measures against suppliers of unapproved products, and our summary of the Victorian liver alert covers a related case of mislabelled retatrutide products.

How Does This Relate to Licensed Drugs and Research Compounds?

It helps to keep three categories distinct. Licensed medicines such as semaglutide and tirzepatide are approved for specific indications by regulators and used under clinical supervision. Investigational drugs such as retatrutide, a GIP, GLP-1 and glucagon receptor agonist from Eli Lilly, remain in clinical development; our explainer on whether retatrutide is a GLP-1 sets out the receptor pharmacology. Research reagents are laboratory materials for in vitro work and are not medicines.

The ANZCA notice concerns licensed injections and peptides used outside licensed care; it is not research on laboratory reagents. For researchers, the relevance is contextual: gastric-emptying effects are a documented receptor-class property, which helps explain why regulators and professional bodies treat the class as a distinct category. Background on the class is in our tirzepatide research guide and the retatrutide research guide; specifications for the reagent are on the retatrutide compound page.

What Should Researchers Take From This?

Three points stand out. The notice is a professional-body communication, not a trial. The mechanism it cites is established for the GLP-1 class, but quantitative claims are absent from the sources reviewed. And the inclusion of “other peptides” signals that clinicians are now treating unlicensed peptide supply as a safety-communication topic, consistent with recent actions covered in our guides on MHRA enforcement against illegal retatrutide manufacturing and the UK legal position on research peptides.

Velox Peptides supplies compounds solely as HPLC-verified in vitro research reagents for qualified researchers, with batch documentation, and does not represent any product as suitable for human or veterinary use. Follow-up items we are watching include whether ANZCA publishes the full notice text with named compounds, and whether UK or EU anaesthesia bodies issue comparable peptide-specific statements.

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