Has anyone had the Sleeve?

I am curious about this procedure, I wanted to know if there was anyone who had this done and how they feel. Please post back. Thanks Waleska

Hey Waleska, To answer your question..yes and no. The top part of the DS is a verticle sleeve gastrectomy (or the Sleeve for short). The sleeve leaves out the intestinal rerouting of the DS. During the sleeve, they bascially cut out 3/4 of your stomach, leaving you with a stomach that is shaped like a banana, and holds between 6-8 oz, although i have read that some doctors go as small as 4 oz. Because of swelling and such, you will get full very quickly in the beginning, but as time progesses you'll be able to eat more normally in terms of portion size. When i say normally, i mean a thin persons normal, not a fat persons 3 helpings normal. Because there is no malabsorbtion, you will have to watch your calorie intake esp. when you get to 4 or 5 months out, because at that point you could out eat your new stomach. The advantages of the Sleeve verses other sugeries are that you don't have intestinal rerouting, so you don't have malabsorbtion issues, which means you won't have long term malnutrition issues, no blind stomach, they remove the part of your stomach that produces the hunger hormone (ghrelin..sp?) which means reduced hunger sensations (side note: there is some research going on now that says by doing this and cutting out the hunger hormone producing part of the stomach, it actually rev's up your metabolism), and you'll have a functioning pyloric valve so you won't get dumping, and intestinal ulcers, you won't have a stoma to deal with so no stretched out stomas, and things don't get stuck (thank God). You will get fuller faster, and know what the word "full" means (to be honest i really didn't know what it meant until after surgery). Disadvantages? Over time your stomach expands to hold the capacity of a normal size meal, again esp after your stomach heals you'll be able to out eat your surgery if you choose to. Like the VBG (which is an older surgery) weight regain is a huge issue with the VSG. From my understanding, the 5 year follow ups are equivalent to RNY patients in terms of weight loss and weight loss retention. The VSG is a good surgery, but it wasn't agressive enough for me, I wanted to have WLS once, and that was it. I determined based on my own medical history of being obese for my entire life, that I would need a malabsorbtion componenet for long term success. So i went with the DS. As for eating? At this point (almost 7 months out) I can eat 2 cups of food at a sitting in most cases. The other day I had a Wendy's BLT chicken salad with 2 ranch dressings, and ate all the stuff off top and 2/3 of the lettuce underneath at one time (i don't worry about my fat intake because DSers malabsorb most of the fat they eat). If i eat denser foods, like yesterday I had general Tsos chicken and pork fried rice. The fried white meat chicken is very very dense, so i was only able to eat about a 1/2-3/4 of a cup of it, plus a few tablespoons of fried rice, and 3/4 of an egg roll. Ok so that was probably close to 2 cups too...lol. Scott

I have not had this procedure, but a friend of mine did about a month ago. Her surgeon told her to have the Sleeve now, lose some of her weight, and then convert to an RNY later. His reasoning was that this was a safer surgery until she was a little bit lighter. Good luck to you. S

there are so many procedures out there, sometimes it can be easy to confuse them... but just to clarify on the above post by SH I've never heard of ANY bariatric surgeon doing a sleeve as step 1 on the way to a RNY procedure. I'd bet that your friend's second step will be completing the DS procedure as Scott mentioned above. Some surgeons are starting to lean towards doing it this way for several reasons... one is, as SH mentioned, to reduce weight to make the more complicated part of the surgery (intestinal rerouting) a little safer by reducing some of the excess abdominal mass. another is the feeling that "well, let's try the VSG first and see how your weight loss goes... if you start to regain after 2-3 years, THEN we can do the DS to help you maintain"..... the thought of not doing any more than absolutely necessary, WHEN it's necessary. most doctors will go along with a patient's request if they want it all done at once, UNLESS there are medical reasons that would make the full procedure dangerous at the patient's current weight.

Sean, I am really not that familiar with either of these procedures. I am just going by what my friend told me, and her words were that her doc was doing the sleeve and then doing "the surgery you had" referring to me. I had RNY, so I assumed that is what she was having. I will have to check with her............she may not even know what she is actually having as she did not ask as many questions as I would have. She did not use the same surgeon as I did, and I don't really know anything about her surgeon and how/why he does what he does. Thanks for you information. S

Thank you soo much for all the people *****plied back. This was very informative and I think I had made my decision on what procedure I want to do. Thanks again to all. If you have any more info regarding the Nutrition and the after sugery feel abouts....please let me know... thanks Waleska

Hey Waleska, There is a sleeve forum on OH, also if you go to the duodenal switch forum or www.duodenalswitch.com there are several VSG patients that hang out there. Scott