A New Type of Obesity Surgery?

Mar 16, 2009

A new technique for doing a gastric sleeve allows the patient to avoid incisions, but is not having scars worth the possibly minimal results?

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/health&id=6707424&rss=rss-kgo-article-6707424

The surgeon uses an endoscope to reach down into the esophogus and then staple off a small section of the stomach to make a pouch.

The technique and the device used for the surgery is in clinical trials.

The doctor interviewed said that they expect the surgery to result in an average loss of 40% of excess weight.

I see a couple of problems with this:

1. This sounds a lot like vertical banded gastroplasty, which has been largely abandoned because of issues with staple line disruption and ineffective long-term weight loss.

2. Losing 40% of excess weight sounds good, but let's do the math. If you are 5'4" and currently weigh 250, you have a BMI of 43. In order to be at the top end of a normal BMI, you would need to lose 105 pounds. Forty percent of that is 42 pounds. Would you be willing to shell out the money for and undergo major surgery to lose 42 pounds?

What do you think of this technique? What do you think might be the positives?

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