Weight Loss Surgery Health Center
What Happens During Weight Loss Surgery?
The term "bariatric" refers to the treatment of obesity. Bariatric surgery -- also called weight loss surgery -- has been practiced in one form or another since the 1950s, but for decades it remained a relatively uncommon weight loss treatment in the United States.
Recently, however, the number of people having bariatric surgery has spiked. In 1998, about 13,000 weight loss surgeries were done in the U.S. Just five years later, about 121,000 were done. The American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery says an estimated 205,000 people with severe obesity had weight loss surgery in 2007.
Quality of Life After Successful Weight Loss Surgery
Are you on the fence about weight loss surgery? There are good reasons to think long and hard about it -- as well as reasons to do it. That’s because, as the pounds melt away, people feel the difference immediately -- and that helps them embrace a new mind-set, says Anita Courcoulas, MD, MPH, chief of minimally invasive bariatric surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. "They learn what it feels like to feel better and have improved health," she tells WebMD. "The surgery...
Read the Quality of Life After Successful Weight Loss Surgery article > >
This figure may be nowhere near the peak. Only 1% of obese people in the U.S. who could potentially benefit from weight loss surgery have had it.
As more people are having weight loss surgery than ever before, medical researchers have also begun to report solidly favorable study results on its safety and weight loss potential.
People who have bariatric surgery can have dramatic weight loss. What's more, they can maintain much of their initial weight loss for as long as ten years after surgery.
Bariatric surgery works in three basic ways:
- Restricting how much food your stomach can hold at any time
- Preventing your digestive system from absorbing all the nutrition in the food you eat
- A combination of these two ways
Restrictive Weight Loss Surgery: Gastric Banding and Gastroplasty
The two purely restrictive types of weight loss surgery done today are called gastric banding and gastroplasty. Both operations make less room in the stomach for food right after it's swallowed.
A small part of your stomach is partitioned off to make a pouch at the end of your esophagus (the tube connecting your mouth to your stomach). This pouch holds only about one-half ounce -- roughly the capacity of a shot glass. It fills up quickly and empties slowly, through a narrow opening to the larger part of the stomach.
Gastric banding involves placing a band around the top end of the stomach. There are two approved gastric banding devices and procedures approved in the U.S. -- LAP-BAND and the Realize band.
Gastroplasty is what people sometimes call "stomach stapling." It creates a small pouch by sealing off a section of the stomach with surgical staples in addition to placing a band around the opening between the pouch and the rest of the stomach, similar to the gastric banding method.
Malabsorptive Weight Loss Surgery: Gastric Bypass and Billiopancreatic Bypass
Gastric bypass surgery also involves stapling the stomach to create a small pouch. The difference between gastric bypass and gastric banding is that food doesn't pass through the pouch to be further digested in the larger part of the stomach.
Instead, the pouch empties directly into the small intestine. To make this work, the small intestine is severed. The surgeon connects one end of it to an opening in the new stomach pouch. The piece of intestine that's still connected to the stomach's natural opening is what's called the duodenum. In the duodenum, juices from the pancreas flow in to mix with food and help to further digest food leaving the stomach.
WebMD Medical Reference
Today in Weight Loss Surgery
Health Solutions From Our Sponsors
©2005-2012 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.
WebMD does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See additional information.