Gastric Bypass Surgery

Gastric bypass surgery is a kind of surgery that is aimed to help you to lose weight by changing your stomach and small intestine to be smaller. You can feel full with less amount of food. It is shrunk your stomach. You will not eat as much food as you used to take before the surgery. The doctor will bypass or re route a part of your digestive system to prevent your body from absorbing as much food as before in this surgery. This therefore means that your body will not get all the calories from the food you take.

Gastric Bypass Surgery Type

They are two types of this surgery, open surgery and laparoscopy. The surgeon makes a big surgical cut to open your belly on the open surgery. He does the bypass by working on your small intestine and stomach. The doctor makes 4-6 cuts in your belly and passes the camera through these cuts on the laparoscopy surgery. Then, he connects the camera to a video monitor. He can look into your belly through the video monitor. He then does the bypass using thin surgical instruments using the other cuts. The results of these two types of surgeries are the same regardless of whether it was open or laparoscopy surgery.

The procedure for gastric bypass involves two major steps. The first step involves making the smaller stomach and then a bypass follows. The first step is known as the restrictive strategy since at the end of the day. It will restrict how much the stomach holds. Make a small stomach will involves the use of staples to divide the stomach into two parts. The upper part is smaller with the bottom one being bigger. The smaller upper part referred to as the pouch is where the food you eat lands. This part is made small like the size of a walnut. You can only eat less food. It cannot handle more than an ounce of food. You will not have high intake of food which may cause weight gain. You will lose weight when you are taking less food than before.

The surgeon connects part of your small intestine to the pouch created in the above step through a small hole. This small hole connecting the pouch and the small intestine to ensure that only a small amount of food reaches the small intestine for absorption. This means that your body absorbs fewer calories, hence losing weight through minimized calorie intake. This is known as malabsorptive. It restricts the amount your body absorbs.

After the surgery, the patient stays in the hospital for 3 to 5 days. You may be required to walk a little bit on the same day of the surgery. For the first two days, you may have catheters running from your nose to the stomach to collect fluids from the stomach. Other catheters may be placed on the bigger portion of your bypassed stomach to drain fluids too. You may have other catheters to help remove urine from the bladder.

For the first three days, you will not be able to eat anything. But after that, you will be able to take liquids and soft foods thereafter. You will be required to wear stockings on your legs. At the same time receive some medicines shots for the same to prevent any blood clotting from happening. Feeling pain is inevitable. You will need some pain killers. Then, you can have them administered to you through an IV whereby a catheter runs through your veins. You will need 2-3 weeks to embark to your normal activities.

Gastric Bypass Surgery Risk

There are some risks associated with gastric bypass surgery. Some of the risks include band erosion, band and staples falling apart which results in a reversed process, pouch stretching. The stomach gets back to the original size, nutritional deficiencies and a situation whereby stomach acid leaks to other parts of the body, eating them away. It’s a risky procedure. It is advisable that it is carried out when it’s actually necessary. So, it is only recommended when you cannot lose a lot of weight and maintain it through dieting, changing of behavior and exercising. It is good to remember that after the surgery, you still need to exercise and diet as it is not a magical quick fix to obesity.