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Weighing the risks of gastric banding / bariatric surgery
By Michele Kirsch.
The demand for weight-loss operations is at a record high, but doctors say surgery is not a quick fix. Anne Diamond’s account earlier this week of her botched Belgian gastric banding operation – in which the device inserted to shrink her stomach capacity was put in the wrong place – is a cautionary tale for anyone thinking that bariatric surgery is the easy option for massive weight loss. The TV presenter ended up having to be rescued, as she puts it, by a team of British surgeons.
A recent Swiss study showed a 40 per cent complication or failure rate for laparoscopic gastric banding: a keyhole operation involving the insertion of an adjustable band at the top of the stomach to create a small pouch, reducing stomach capacity. The other main weight-loss operation, gastric bypass – in which part of the small intestine is bypassed to reduce calorie absorption – has a similar complication rate. Problems range from abdominal cramping to life-threatening infections …….. while the complications may sound gruesome, most obesity experts think it better for the morbidly obese to have bariatric surgery than not to have it, because the long-term health risks of obesity are greater than those of the surgery.”
Source: Weighing the risks – Health – Times Online
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