Health and Fitness Facts

If you are one of the millions of clinically obese individuals facing the prospect of weight loss surgery (some estimates put the number of morbidly obese Americans at 15 million) then the mini gastric bypass probably sounds like the ideal solution. A short, simple and relatively inexpensive form of minimally invasive weight loss surgery typically involving less than 45 minutes in surgery and no more than an overnight stay in hospital, the advertising certainly makes it seem an attractive prospect at least when compared to the alternatives. But is the mini gastric bypass really such a good choice?

The number of people undergoing weight loss surgery is rising dramatically from some 20,000 surgeries ten years ago to an estimated 200,000 operations this year in the United States alone. Against this background it is estimated that less than 4,000 people worldwide will opt for mini gastric bypass surgery, which is far from a ringing endorsement for this attractive sounding option. So why are so few people choosing this route?

Weight loss surgery began its life back in the 1950s, but much of today surgery is based upon the work of Dr Mason and Dr Ito and arises out of observations they made on the weight loss of women undergoing partial gastrectomy for peptic ulcer disease.

One of the early forms of gastric bypass surgery involved the use of a small loop connected to the re-constructed stomach pouch which proved to be a relatively simple procedure and produced some very encouraging results. Unfortunately, however, this procedure also allowed digestive juices from the small bowel to enter the gastric pouch and these extremely corrosive juices sometimes gave rise to severe ulceration of both the stomach and the esophagus. As a result, the procedure was quickly abandoned and further experimentation led to a number of more successful procedures, some of which are still widely used today, such as the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass.

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