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Lap-Band® Weight Loss Surgery

Treatment Options

Non-Surgical Treatment
Dieting, exercise and medication have long been regarded as the conventional methods to achieve weight loss. Sometimes, these efforts are successful in the short term. However, for people who are morbidly obese, the results rarely last. For many, this can translate into what's called the “yo-yo syndrome,” where patients continually gain and lose weight with the possibility of serious psychological and health consequences.

Recent research reveals that conventional methods of weight loss generally fail to produce permanent weight loss. Several studies have shown that patients on diets, exercise programs, or medication are able to lose approximately 10 percent of their body weight but tend to regain two-thirds of it within one year, and almost all of it within five years. Another study found that less than 5 percent of patients in weight loss programs were able to maintain their reduced weight after five years.

Surgical Treatment
There are two types of surgery for the purpose of weight loss. One is malabsorptive, a surgery that shortens the digestive tract by bypassing most of the stomach and part of the small intestine, allowing less food to be ingested and the absorption of fewer nutrients and calories. This procedure is called Gastric Bypass. The second type is restrictive. This surgery reduces how much food the stomach can hold.

Restrictive surgeries can include Stomach Stapling/Vertical Banded Gastroplasty (VBG) or a minimally invasive procedure called Gastric Banding. Both surgeries restrict how much the stomach can hold, limiting food intake, yet allow for the digestion of nutrients and calories in the normal fashion.

Gastric Bypass
In gastric bypass (or Roux-en-Y) surgery, the surgeon creates a small pouch at the top of the stomach, sealing it off from the rest of the stomach with staples and redirecting the small intestine to the newly created pouch. The new, smaller stomach will hold approximately a half an ounce of food. By bypassing the first section of the small intestine, foods enter directly into the second section of the small intestine, limiting the ability to absorb calories.

The Roux-en-Y bypass can be performed laparoscopically using small, tubular instruments inserted into the abdomen through a series of short incisions. Laparoscopic surgery typically allows for:

• Fewer complications
• Decreased discomfort
• Quicker recovery time
• Shorter hospital stays

Surgeons have utilized gastric bypass surgery as a means of controlling weight since the 1950s.

Gastric Banding
In June of 2001, the FDA approved the use of the LAP-BAND System as a safe, minimally invasive and adjustable surgical treatment for morbid obesity in the United States. It induces weight loss by reducing the capacity of the stomach, by the use of a small inflatable implant device that restricts the amount of food that can be consumed.

Since its clinical introduction in 1993, almost 150,000 LAP-BAND procedures have been performed around the world and over 30,000 in the U.S. alone.

Contact the Weight Loss Surgery Program
For more information, please call Jamee Brinkerhoff, Weight Loss Surgery Coordinator at 208-367-8309. To Register for a Lap band Seminar please call Saint Alphonsus Resource Line at 208-367-3454 or via email at weightlosssurgery@sarmc.org

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