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Having surgery is the most effective way to lose weight and to maintain that for the rest of your life. The success rate for weight loss surgery can be as high as 90%, but that really depends on the patient and how well they continue following this lifestyle change. The most important thing for the patient to remember is to remain engaged with either their physician or the weight loss surgeon that performed their operation. By that we mean that the patient should continue to come to the office for support groups and nutritional groups and for routine follow ups with their weight loss surgeon. Patients that remain engaged with the practice that performed their operation are definitely the most successful in terms of long term weight loss.
Having surgery is the most effective way to lose weight and to maintain that for the rest of your life. The success rate for weight loss surgery can be as high as 90%, but that really depends on the patient and how well they continue following this lifestyle change. The most important thing for the patient to remember is to remain engaged with either their physician or the weight loss surgeon that performed their operation. By that we mean that the patient should continue to come to the office for support groups and nutritional groups and for routine follow ups with their weight loss surgeon. Patients that remain engaged with the practice that performed their operation are definitely the most successful in terms of long term weight loss.
There are several complications that can occur with weight loss surgery. The typical complications that we talk about (and this relates to any type of operation) would be bleeding, infection, injury to other organs, and the risks of general anesthesia. Specifically with weight loss surgery, there are some things that we get concerned about. When talking about either the sleeve gastrectomy or the gastric bypass - because both of those operations use stapling devices to both cut the stomach and to seal it, there is a risk that a patient can develop a leak where fluid actually leaks out of that staple line. That's really concerning because a leak is the most common cause of death from either a sleeve gastrectomy or a gastric bypass. The leak rate nationwide is somewhere around 2-3%. However, the leak rate at well established and experienced practices such as ours is generally about 0.5%.
Other complications that we worry about would be: developing an intestinal obstruction and that's something that you might see in a gastric bypass but would very rarely see in a sleeve gastrectomy or a lap band. With a gastric bypass, that would occur at a pretty low rate of about 1%. Other things that we worry about would be developing a blood clot in the legs and that blood clot can break off and travel to the lungs. Now this can happen in anyone who has any operation. However, patients that are morbidly obese have a much higher risk of developing blood clots. What we do is we administer a blood thinner to every patient that is having weight loss surgery and we give this right before the operation and we also give it after the operation until the patient leaves and goes home. This significantly reduces the risk of developing blood clots. However, because we are giving the patient a blood thinner, it does slightly increase their risk of bleeding. However, this risk of bleeding is very small and generally does not pose a problem for us or for the patients.
During the first 2-3 weeks after having weight loss surgery, most patients will experience some degree of discomfort from their incisions. They may also feel fatigued or tired because of the dramatically decreased calorie intake. However, that improves gradually with time and usually by the end of 2 or 3 weeks, most patients feel fairly well.
Patients are often are very eager to start exercising after they have weight loss surgery and that's great - I encourage that. However, it's important for them to remember that they cannot perform any strenuous exercises (meaning lifting weights greater than 20 pounds or running or doing sit-ups) for a period of 6 weeks. Once they've reached 6 weeks after surgery, they can go ahead and do any type of exercise that they want.
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