When the weight of a person goes more than 100 pounds over the ideal weight, he or she might need weight loss surgery. There are various types of weight loss surgeries. But the surgeons select the one which will suit you correctly. Before deciding about which type of weight loss surgery to be performed on you they will ask for some test reports like blood sugar and pressure, urinalysis, chest x-ray, electrocardiogram and many more. If all the conditions are favorable for the surgery they will opt for it.
Bariatric
The bariatric weight loss surgery is a common form of surgery which is prescribed to the overweight patients. The idea is to reduce the size of the stomach a patient by operating on it. The restrictive procedure is all about creating a pouch at the top part of the stomach so that the patient cannot consume much food at a time.
An operated stomach can hold only one ounce of food inside it and this can increase up to 2-3 ounces. The other method is to place a band made of a special material around the stomach in order to lower the food intake. There is another process of bariatric surgery where the surface of the intestine is reduced which absorbs the calories of food. This completely depends on the patient's condition which one will be performed on him or her.
Biliopancreatic diversion (BPD)
This is the procedure of removing a huge part of the stomach. The small remaining part keeps connected with the ultimate segment of the small intestine. This means that the other parts of the small intestine are completely bypassed using this method. There remains a common channel which allows the digestive juices to mix with the food before they get into colon.
This way the food intake is restricted as well as the amount of gastric juices produced are also reduced. This procedure can cause different deficiencies of the nutritional requirement of the body. But this type of weight loss surgery is particularly popular in United States.
Laparoscopic Gastric Banding
The upper portion of the stomach is sealed with an inflatable band. This makes it tough for the patient to intake larger amount of food and they already feel full with food. When all the other methods fail, this type of weight loss surgery is performed and that also on people who are extremely overweight.
There are always risks involved in surgeries though most of the cases become successful. This is always a good idea to know each and every detail clearly before you go for the surgery and the post surgery care and diet also plays an important role in getting a permanent result.
Cost Of Weight Loss Surgery
A recent study examined the records of a large number of people who had undergone gastric bypass surgery in the 10 years from 1995 to 2004 and reported that in the region of one percent of patients died within twelve months of surgery and some 6 percent died within 5 years. When these statistics had been adjusted to take account of age and sex and matched against figures for the population at large they were found to be fairly high. So just what does this say about the ability of gastric bypass surgery to reduce the general risk to our health?
If we are to answer this particular question we need to look beyond the headline numbers and discover just why these deaths occurred and where the real variation lies between the population at large and obesity patients.
When we examine the breakdown of the numbers two things in particular stand out.
The first is the number of people whose deaths resulted from heart disease which was the leading cause of death in the obesity patients and is well higher than that found in the population as a whole.
The second is the number of deaths that resulted from suicide and from drug overdoses that, while not officially classed as suicide, must nonetheless raise the question of whether or not such overdoses were truly accidents. Within the population at large you would expect to see some 2 deaths from suicide in a group of the same size as the study group and yet the study group showed a total of 30 deaths from suicide and drug overdoses.
When we look at these results and consider them alongside our wider knowledge of people undergoing gastric bypass surgery then we may possibly understand this variation at least in part.
Despite the fact that gastric bypass surgery is frequently extremely successful it is often not performed until people are suffering from other conditions or comorbidities and, although surgery will cure a number of these problems and reduce the risk from others, many people still remain at some risk following surgery. For example, in many cases patients remain troubled by things like high blood pressure and diabetes and it is possibly not surprising that this section of the population has a higher risk of heart disease.
Also, while bariatric surgery may lead to a significant loss in weight many patients are still very much overweight for a long time following surgery and some will stay that way for months or years to come.
Lastly, the lifestyle changes that follow surgery can be dramatic and many people find that depression sets in the weeks following their operation. It is a fact that a great deal of attention is paid to the physical affects of obesity surgery and the requirement for things like a strict diet and an exercise program but, all too frequently, very little attention is paid to the very real psychological affects of surgery.
Only time will show the extent to which this explanation is valid but there should be little doubt that improvements to follow-up care for gastric bypass surgery patients could go a long way towards finding a solution for this anomaly.