Dr Steve
08-21-2008, 12:48 PM
What do you think about the lap band? I weigh 350 lbs and am 5' 6" and have tried everything to lose weight...
My surgery professors in medical school used to make fun of the whole "bariatric (weight loss) surgery" movement; they'd say "people are fat because they eat too much." and "you can't fix a social problem with surgery". However, the field has advanced a lot since its early days (I went to medical school a lonnnnngggg time ago) and the field of bariatric surgery enjoys much more prominence and success these days.
If everything else fails, and I mean everything else, then certain patients may be a candidate for some sort of surgical intervention. This should only be done on adults who are at least 100 lbs overweight or have a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or greater. (You can calculate your BMI by clicking HERE (http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/).)
There are two major surgical procedures done these days for obesity, one is the gastric bypass, and the other (and there are others, too) is the Laparoscopic Gastric Banding Surgery (LGBS). The gastric bypass does just that...bypasses the majority of the stomach and dumps food directly from a little stomach pouch into the small intestine.
Here's what the gastric bypass looks like:
http://www.uihealthcare.com/depts/med/surgery/weightloss/images/rouxen.jpg
The LGBS is done with a laparoscope, and basically puts an inflatable hoop around the stomach to make a little pouch. It looks like this:
http://gastricbandindia.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/gastric-banding.gif
The benefits to LGBS include less invasive surgery, reversibility, adjustability, and decent (though less dramatic) results. From an aesthetic point of view, I am not enthused with surgery that changes the anatomy of the human body drastically without some sort of extreme need. All that extraneous stomach tissue hanging around after the bypass gives me the creeps.
People can lose an average of 1-2 lb/week with the LGBS but it ain't a magical solution. You can defeat it by drinking milk shakes, ensure and other high carb, low residue foods (they just slip through the pouch and into the main stomach). Any program that offers you a surgical solution to obesity had better have a very comprehensive and long-lasting dietary counseling program or they won't get the kind of results that most people are looking for.
I heard one surgeon put it this way: you'll lose about 40% of the weight you really want to lose with the band...the rest you still have to do yourself. Diet and exercise are still the key, even when your stomach is 1/8th the size it was before.
Hope this helps.
your pal,
steve
My surgery professors in medical school used to make fun of the whole "bariatric (weight loss) surgery" movement; they'd say "people are fat because they eat too much." and "you can't fix a social problem with surgery". However, the field has advanced a lot since its early days (I went to medical school a lonnnnngggg time ago) and the field of bariatric surgery enjoys much more prominence and success these days.
If everything else fails, and I mean everything else, then certain patients may be a candidate for some sort of surgical intervention. This should only be done on adults who are at least 100 lbs overweight or have a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or greater. (You can calculate your BMI by clicking HERE (http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/).)
There are two major surgical procedures done these days for obesity, one is the gastric bypass, and the other (and there are others, too) is the Laparoscopic Gastric Banding Surgery (LGBS). The gastric bypass does just that...bypasses the majority of the stomach and dumps food directly from a little stomach pouch into the small intestine.
Here's what the gastric bypass looks like:
http://www.uihealthcare.com/depts/med/surgery/weightloss/images/rouxen.jpg
The LGBS is done with a laparoscope, and basically puts an inflatable hoop around the stomach to make a little pouch. It looks like this:
http://gastricbandindia.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/gastric-banding.gif
The benefits to LGBS include less invasive surgery, reversibility, adjustability, and decent (though less dramatic) results. From an aesthetic point of view, I am not enthused with surgery that changes the anatomy of the human body drastically without some sort of extreme need. All that extraneous stomach tissue hanging around after the bypass gives me the creeps.
People can lose an average of 1-2 lb/week with the LGBS but it ain't a magical solution. You can defeat it by drinking milk shakes, ensure and other high carb, low residue foods (they just slip through the pouch and into the main stomach). Any program that offers you a surgical solution to obesity had better have a very comprehensive and long-lasting dietary counseling program or they won't get the kind of results that most people are looking for.
I heard one surgeon put it this way: you'll lose about 40% of the weight you really want to lose with the band...the rest you still have to do yourself. Diet and exercise are still the key, even when your stomach is 1/8th the size it was before.
Hope this helps.
your pal,
steve