With more and more people becoming overweight and obese in America, weight loss surgeries are on the rise. While no one disputes that the obesity epidemic is a bad thing, newer bariatric surgery St Louis procedures are less invasive and better at being tailored to individual people’s needs.
If you are considering using your insurance to pay for a procedure, you should know that most companies require previous documented efforts to lose weight, and a BMI of at least 40 before they are willing to pay. Those with a BMI of at least 35 and a weight-related illness may also qualify. If you are planning to pay for the procedure out of pocket, you’ll need to find out what your doctor’s requirements are. They are often similar, but some have different feelings on the subject.
The gastric bypass, the first and most common form of surgical weight loss, is losing favor due to several less than pleasant side effects. In a gastric bypass, the stomach is cut and stapled into a small pouch, and then re-attached lower down on the small intestine, bypassing certain digestive processes. The patient can only eat small amounts of food at a time after the procedure, and does not completely absorb the food, either, thanks to the bypass.
Gastric bypass is associated with certain problems such as malnutrition that requires careful diet planning and supplements, and inability to eat certain foods that are high in sugar without having severely negative symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and shaking. This is called ‘dumping’ syndrome. Because of these problems, other types of weight loss surgeries are gaining popularity.
One of the more common alternatives to gastric bypass is a banding procedure. Usually known by their brand names, these procedures use a small, inflatable band that is placed around the stomach near the top, enclosing a small pouch. Inflating the band with saline pinches off the opening to the pouch until the proper size is reached for appropriate weight loss.
These tiny pouches creating by banding fill up quickly, just as in gastric bypass, but slowly empty into the rest of the stomach and move normally through the rest of the digestive tract. While still feeling full quickly, the patient avoids dumping syndrome and malnutrition because they absorb all of the nutrients in their food. A tube that reaches from the band to a port under the skin in the chest area is where saline is injected or removed, which loosens or tightens the band.
Weight loss surgeries are relatively safe, but they do have some complications that are exacerbated by the fact that they are performed on larger people. Anyone considering one of these procedures should have tried everything else first. But if other methods did not produce good results, weight loss surgeries can be a helpful option in some cases.
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