Weight Loss Surgery

Many people who are morbidly obese can also suffer from psychological problems due to their physical appearance and the discomfort they feel by being so heavily overweight.

Not only are they unhappy with how they look but they could also be suffering from or at risk of developing many health problems such as cardiac problems, diabetes, hypertension, acid reflux, sleep apnoea and depression. Any one of these problems can reduce a person’s quality of life and some can even reduce their life expectancy.

For many, dieting and exercise simply will not work. When a person has reached a certain weight they find it difficult to overcome the mental issues they have regarding overeating plus they may not be able to exercise sufficiently enough to lose weight. For some the only option is weight loss surgery. If an individual is more than 100 pounds over their ideal weight or have a BMI of over 40, then weight loss surgery may be the only option left to them.

Before a doctor will recommend someone for weight loss surgery, the patient will normally have to provide proof that they have tried to lose weight naturally first. Losing weight by surgical means is considered to be a last attempt to try and get rid of weight and should not be used as a form of cosmetic surgery. The fact that the patient is so morbidly overweight will put them at a higher risk of complications during surgery and for this reason a doctor should not recommend weight loss surgery for any patient unless all other attempts have been tried unsuccessfully.

Some of the types of weight loss surgery available include small bowel bypass, gastric bypass, biliopancreatic diversion and laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding. A small bowel bypass allows the patient to eat normally but the food does not get absorbed into the body and is instead passed as diarrhoea. The side effects that occurred during this type of weight loss surgery have made it almost unheard of now.

A popular form of weight loss surgery is the gastric bypass. This will allow you to only eat a small amount of food before feeling full. The way this works is by stapling some of the stomach to create a smaller stomach. The rest of the stomach is not used. The upper part of the small intestine is then divided so that one part is connected to this ‘new stomach’ and the other part is reconnected to the lower part of the small intestine.

Biliopancreatic diversion is where most of the stomach is removed and most of the gut is bypassed. This procedure will reduce the amount of food which can be eaten and the amount of food which is absorbed by the body.

The safest and most popular choice by far is the Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding which is a procedure that places a band over the stomach and tightened to allow minimum food to be eaten.

All these procedures carry risks and should therefore only be considered as a last resort.

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