Bypass Surgery

Posts Tagged ‘digestive system’

Bypass surgery includes changing stomach size and altering digestive system to lower down the food intake. The main purpose of this process is to provide help to patients fighting with their obesity and to reduce the health related risks. This surgery is getting popular today, but it is actually not meant for every single person who is obese. It is an invasive surgery and even a procedure, which entails the risk of some post-operative problems. It should be exercised along with a balanced lifestyle change. After the completion of the surgery, whole responsibility of losing weight and weight control depends on the shoulders of patient. Gastric surgery complications also occur, so prior setting a gastric bypass; you should consider pertinent factors to make right decision.

Procedure of Gastric Bypass

As per the Mayo site, the gastric surgery is performed as follows: the surgeon will make a tiny pouch at the upper part of stomach and then add a bypass on the small intestine and stomach segment. The surgeon will staple the stomach and seals it from the other part of the stomach. Resulting small pouch is similar to the walnut size and can just hold an ounce of your food. Physically the small pouch is separated from stomach. Surgeon will cut the intestine and then sews its part on the pouch.

Surgery Complications: Postoperative Facts

Immediately after the bypass surgery, patients are not given permission to take solid food for at least 3 days, to give proper time to stomach for healing. Strict diet is important, it includes step by step intake of foods, starting with liquids to purees and soft foods to the normal meals. Since the size of stomach is decreased, so the food quantity will also reduce, as patient will experience fullness fast. Ultimately you will eat less food and this will result in the loss of weight.

Potential Gastric Surgery Complications

Some common considerations that should be acknowledge before making any decision on bypass surgery. The following information is not given to scare you, but for informing and guiding you to make right decision.

First thing to remember is that before consulting an inexperienced, uncooperative or disreputable surgeon you should think twice. Always ask questions to the surgeon regarding his or her experience in this operation and his success rate. A study of researchers at Washington University showed that about 1 in fifty people die in 1 month due to gastric surgery.  As per Herman Praszkier “You like to know more information regarding the background of surgeon as much as you can. Anyone who avoids your question will get up as well as walk out.”

Following a bypass surgery, an individual stomach is not able to absorb all food nutrients. This can result into iron, protein, vitamins B12 and calcium deficiencies. Note that about 30 percent of individual will undergo nutritional deficiencies. Thus a strict diet is always advised.  Vitamin program for whole life to compensate for iron, calcium and B12 is mandatory. Gastric surgery procedures have different versions varying on the nutrient deficiency.  Consult first with your doctor then make enquiry whether the problem is related with the kind of gastric surgery that you actually are contemplating. When connecting the stomach parts together, surgeon should rely on patient’s body for forming tight seals. Complications of common bypass surgery consists liquids, which can drip in abdominal cavity while the body do not properly seal and heal, causing abscesses and infection.

Other complications that can be included in the gastric surgery are tiredness, dry skin, hair loss or thinning hair, body aches, mood changes or feeling cold. It is being said that about 10 percent to 20 percent of patients need follow up surgery as well as 3 percent of patients got death in 15 yrs after surgery. Getting more information on the gastric surgery will really help you to know and take right decision, before undergoing bypass surgery.

However, the recent studies have shown that the obese individual who undergoes bypass surgery lower down the premature death chances by 89 percent than those who don’t select the procedure. Hopefully, with new development of medicine and surgical procedures, there will be more improvement in the gastric surgery. So always do make some research before you undergo gastric surgery.