Diet and Weight Loss Weight Loss Surgery

Surgical Solutions to Obesity

Coronary artery disease and high blood pressure also respond well. It's great to see patients who may be on five, ten, twelve different medications, over time say, "Well, I dropped this medication," or, "I halved this dose." Within a year or two, they may be down to the bare minimum of medications.

I imagine that the surgery may also solve some of the more structural problems in the body, like joint pain?
Absolutely. People with aches and pains or degenerative joint disease are well served by this surgery.

Could you describe the experience of one patient who has responded well to the surgery?
Sure. I operated on a woman about a year and a half ago who was about three-hundred and fifty pounds overweight, and had been obese for most of her life.

She was only in her early forties, but was so big that she had to come into the office with a walker. She was unable to sit in any of the chairs even though we have fairly heavy-duty armless chairs, and she was too heavy to weigh in our office. Our scale goes up to five hundred pounds.

Did she describe to you her reasons for wanting the surgery?
She told me she couldn't work, couldn't fit into an armchair, and couldn't really go out anywhere. She said she could not take the bus, because she couldn't get up the stairs into the bus, or sit down in the bus. She didn't go out to shop because people would stare at her, whisper about her behind her back, or just blurt out obscenities at her.

Was bariatric surgery a last resort for her?
She'd been struggling with this for a very long time. She had tried everything else: diets, over the counter pills, and exercise, when she was younger and abler. And she had decided that if she didn't do anything at this point about her weight, having failed at everything else, her life expectancy was extremely limited. She wasn't sure whether she'd be around in a few more years. And I agreed that her weight was life-threatening.

What happened after the initial consultation?
First she was seen by our nutritionist, and then she was evaluated by one of the psychologists we use.

Why do you do a psychological evaluation?
Many reasons. A lot of patients who come in, perhaps at the suggestion of their own doctors, don't understand that this is a very big operation, and that it can occasionally go wrong, and that it can occasionally lead to complications, including death. This is not a tummy tuck, or liposuction. They need to understand the severity of the procedure, and the small chance of major complications.

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