| Dr. Tom Umbach is a member of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Here the Doctor has answered some of the common questions Bizymoms visitors have about Bariatric Surgery.
Q. How long is the recovery period?
A. The recovery period after weight loss surgery is fairly quick. Most patients are able to return back to work the next week without much difficultly. This quick recovery is due to many factors. The operations are done laparoscopically, which greatly minimizes pain and infection. The day of surgery, patients are able to drink and walk within several hours of surgery. In fact, most patients can go home the day of surgery and recover in the comfort of their own house. Also, I am very aggressive with pain control and do many different things around the time of surgery to help keep the pain down. Most patients go home and do not take the narcotic pain medication. As a final testimony to the quick recovery after surgery, we have patients who come from all over the United States, have their weight loss operation and then fly home several days later.
Q. What is Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery?
A. The Roux-en-Y gastric bypass operation is the oldest form of weight loss surgery that we perform. It has been around for nearly 50 years. The bypass involves making a small gastric pouch the size of an egg, and then bringing up a branch of small intestine to connect to the pouch. The bypass gives patients lots of restriction, takes away their hunger (patients often have to remind themselves to eat!), and offers beneficial hormonal changes. The operation can be performed with a risk of complications similiar to or less than other common operations such as gallbladder surgery. It is important to stress that the bypass is a tool for patients to use. It requires patients to make lifestyle changes and exercise in order to be successful.
Q. What types of bariatric surgeries are there?
A. There are many types of bariatric operations. Unfortunately, it gets very confusing because of the many different names. However, the common operations are the gastric band, gastric bypass, and now the gastric sleeve. All of these operations in one form or another give a patient restriction to eating a large amount of food. So a small amount of food will satisfy patients and keep them full for many hours. The gastric band involves placing a band around the top of the stomach to create small stomach pouch above the monday. The gastric sleeve involves removing part of the stomach to create a narrow sleeve or long pouch of remaining stomach. Both of these operations create new stomach pouches to help patients eat small healthy meals.
Q. Does Bariatric Surgery Typically Lead to Major Weight Loss?
A. Many studies have been done on weight loss. Weight loss surgery is the only known treatment that leads to long term success for weight loss. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there are no medical weight loss programs with or without medications that have been proven to help patients keep their weight off permanently. Most patients who use medications to lose weight stop the medications because of the side effects and then quickly regain their weight back and then some! As it turns out, the process of being hungry, getting full and eating is incredible complex and poorly understood. It is unlikely that a simple pill will be able to perform all that we want it to do for weight loss.
Q. What is the average level of weight loss of each type of surgery?
A. Most patients after weight loss surgery lose the majority of their extra body weight and keep it off. For weight loss surgery, patients typically lose about 2/3rds of their extra weight. For example, a patient who has an extra weight of 150 pounds can expect to lose 100 pounds and keep it off permanently. For those patients who work harder, they can expect to lose even more weight. One thing is for certain, the typical weight loss operations do not cause people to become malnurished and lose too much weight. Of note, most of my patients are malnurished even before surgery and we get them in better health and shape after surgery. An interesting fact is that babies are healthier and thinner with mothers who have had weight loss surgery.
|
