Thursday, October 04, 2018

Another gastric bypass disaster


On TV, this AM, on a unrelated to WLS show, I encountered the case of a weight loss surgery patient, who, like many people fighting weight issues, had yo yo dieted from the age of 7 when he suffered severe emotional trauma.  As a young man, when he was a sales rep,  he heard of the lap band before it got FDA approval.  He went down to Mexico to have a lap band procedure, and had good weight loss results but four years later, he found himself in excruciating pain. His band had eroded into his stomach. He was ex-banded and gained some weight back.  So after he and his wife, had a child, he had a gastric bypass, but shortly after the procedure, he got scar tissue growing into his digestive organs and was found, on the floor, bleeding.  He also suffered ulcers and septicemia, in addition to losing some of his small bowel (probably after a gastric bypass reversal).  He spent 400 days in the hospital, and ICU.  He coded twice going into full congestive heart failure, and was in a coma and on a respirator.  He feels the gastric bypass (and all the complications) was a reason why his marriage failed. (50% of marriages break up after weight loss surgery.)  He sought weight loss surgery, he said, because he thought surgery was easy. Now, he is engaged again to someone connected with a very skilled plastic surgeon. He likely, was seeking plastic surgery to fix the issues with his scar as the multiple abdominal surgeries had left a hole in his abdomin.  Bottom line, although many surgeons are no longer doing the gastric bypass, there are still several doing it when, in truth, even under the best circumstances, it can be life shortening and more.  Education is our best weapon.  "There is no short cut to a place worth going!"