(origionally posted by Diana Cox HERE) - THE DS IS NOT A GASTRIC BYPASS, NO MATTER WHAT DR. ANTHONE SAYS. It is a well-known fact that Dr. Anthone uses some creative language fighting for his patients to get approved for the DS, and one of those ways may include characterizing the surgery in terms that fit the language of his patients' contracts which approve gastric bypass procedures. That fact does not make the DS a gastric bypass. There is no stomach bypassed. It is an intestinal bypass, or more correctly, an intestinal reconstruction.

One of the nefarious ways that the insurance companies have used to deny patients the DS is by deliberately confabulating the results of the DS with the inferior results of the biliopancreatic diversion or BPD. In 2004, I gave a presentation to the DS surgeons at the ASBS meeting in San Diego, urging them to STOP using the term BPD/DS in describing the surgery. The BPD surgery was pioneered by Dr. Scopinaro, who is still a revered elder statesman in the field of bariatric surgery. The nomenclature "BPD/DS" was used by when the DS was developed as an improvement to the BPD to give acknowledgement as to the origins of the surgery, but IT IS A MISNOMER and factually incorrect. The proper names for the surgery include "gastric reduction with duodenal switch" or "sleeve gastrectomy with duodenal switch" or -- as is used in the CPT code book under 43845 -- "gastric restrictive procedure with partial gastrectomy, pylorus-preserving duodenoileostomy and ileoileosteomy to limit absorption."

I urged the DS surgeons at that meeting to STOP using the BPD nomenclature because the insurance companies are using that INCORRECT terminology against the patients. Many of them have stopped doing so.

This terminology is not flexible, no matter how some people, including DS surgeons, use them. These doctors can be as careless or lazy as any other person in their use of language. Sometimes, they are simply "dumbing down" what they are saying to help people understand in terms they are familiar with. Sometimes, they are deliberately manipulating the language for insurance purposes.

However, these little "inaccuracies" could be matters of LIFE AND DEATH to a DSer some day. We DON'T have a gastric bypass, we have an intestinal bypass. We don't have a pouch, we have a stomach. We are NOT transected. These things MATTER.