stomach cancer concern after sleeve?

Good afternoon folks,

I am having surgery this Thursday morning and one question keeps going through my mind which I have yet to ask my surgeon. I'm sure that some of you have already asked this question of your surgeon so I thought I'd ask you guys. What happens if someone with a vertical sleeve gets stomach cancer since there is so little left to work with? I'm guessing that the likelihood is rare. I thank you in advance for the information.

well i have looked up stomach cancer and some people that have a family history of it take the option of having their stomachs completely removed ....
If that was to happen then the intestines aparantly after a little while form a pouch on their own and start working like a stomach to hold food in.

That was one of the reasons i felt safe to have this surgery because people can live a normal life with no stomach at all... so i knew id be fine with a little one.
 

Wow Linda!

That makes me so much better! I had no idea that one could completely live without a stomach. Thanks so much for the information.

I have wondered this since my Grandpa died of stomach cancer.  Generally I think with stomach cancer they dont leave any of it anyway so you would just have less to lose :)

This was a major factor that I replayed over and over in my head, before surgery.  That and even if my new, smaller stomach could handle cancer treatment, itself.  Since most cancer treatments are very hard on the stomach.  Instead, I took the chance and hoped for the best.  That's all you can do.

I was concerned about this also, and my surgeon said that worst case scenario, they hack out your whole stomach and your esophogus is connected directly to your intestines, and that people are able to still function pretty normally that way.  Made me feel a LOT better about the whole thing.  I was moer concerned about some sort of trauma to the stomach, cause there isn't enough to repair!!

the odds of me dying of stomach cancer were a zillion times lower than me dying of complications of morbid obesity...

i think made the right choice......   and i got a smaller butt out of the deal!   



jeris

My risk of developing any form of cancer, diabetes, arthritis, sleep apnea, etc... were becoming greater and greater the more weight I gained. So, I considered such post operative risks smaller because they were merely possibilities, where it was pretty much a certainty that I would die from obesity if I didn't fix it. BTW, my mom died at 57 obese, with congestive heart failure and newly diagnosed two 2 diabetes. The surgery was my chance at decreasing my risks of such things.

Good luck to you!

Meg

I would think your chances of getting stomach cancer are less after VSG because you have less stomach to get cancer in.   

My surgeon is at Duke, and they sometimes repair botched sleeves.  He said someone's stomach was made way too small and wouldn't function (kept getting strictures over and over), so they had to take out her stomach and attach her esophagus to her intestines. 

So you can live without a stomach.