Weight Loss Surgery

The most important step in weight loss surgery is getting all of the information you need about the various surgical options.

Bariatric surgeons first began to recognize the potential for weight loss surgery while performing operations that required the removal of large segments of a patient’s stomach and intestine.

After the weight loss surgery, doctors noticed that in many cases patients were unable to maintain their pre-surgical weight. With further study, bariatric surgeons were able to recommend similar modifications in the weight loss surgery procedure that could be safely used to produce weight loss in morbidly obese patients.

Over the last decade these weight loss surgery procedures have been continually refined in order to improve results and minimize risks.

Today's bariatric surgeons have access to a substantial body of clinical data to help them determine which weight loss surgery should be used and why.

Weight loss surgery is a major surgery. Although most patients enjoy an improvement in obesity-related health conditions (such as mobility, self-image, and self-esteem) after the successful results of weight loss surgery, these results should not be the overriding motivation for having the procedure. The goal is to live better, healthier, and longer.

The growing use of weight loss surgery to treat morbid obesity is the result of three factors:

• Our current knowledge of the significant health risks of morbid obesity
  
  
• The relatively low bariatric surgery risks and complications of the procedures versus not having the surgery
  
  
• The ineffectiveness of current non-surgical approaches to produce sustained weight loss