Risks of weight loss surgery highlighted by study

By Robert Cervin, May 6th, 2013 | Health | 0 Comments

Weight loss surgery is becoming increasingly common, but a revealing study shows that a certain type of procedure is not always safe or healthy.

In the study it was shown that 39% of patients undergoing gastric band surgery had experienced major complications. Furthermore, 22% had minor problems. This means that the majority of obesity surgery patients had health problems because of their operations.

The study focused specifically on gastric band surgery, which involves a silicone, inflatable band being inserted around the top of a patient’s stomach via microscopic surgery. Once inflated, the band forms a kind of barrier to stomach expansion, which makes it painful when individuals’ overeat and thereby almost forces them to diet.

Remarkably, despite the suffering that study respondents’ experienced because of obesity surgery, most insisted they were still happy with the end results. Doctors say people who undergo these operations are so keen to lose weight that they are more than willing to experience some discomfort on the route to better health.

A different type of obesity surgery called gastric bypass surgery can also cause complications. Gastric bypass surgery involves the size of the stomach being altered and a separate ‘pouch’ being created for excess food.
The study was published in the Archives of Surgery journal