Weight Loss
Bariatric Surgery

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

After the 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 that could be safely used to produce weight loss in morbidly obese patients.

Over the last decade these weight loss 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 surgeries should be used and why.

Weight loss surgery is major surgery. Its growing use 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
  
  

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an increase in 20 percent or more above your ideal body weight is the point at which excess weight or obesity becomes a health risk.

Obesity results from the excessive accumulation of fat that exceeds the body's skeletal and physical standards. Obesity becomes "morbid" when it reaches the point of significantly increasing the risk of one or more obesity-related health conditions or serious diseases, also known as co-morbidities. These co-morbidities are conditions or diseases that result in either significant physical disability or even death.

Surgery should be viewed first and foremost as a method for alleviating debilitating, chronic disease.

In most cases, the minimum qualification for consideration as a candidate for the weight loss procedure is 100 lbs. above ideal body weight or those with a Body Mass Index of 40 or greater.

Occasionally a weight loss procedure will be considered for someone with a BMI of 35 or higher if the patient's physician determines that obesity-related health conditions have resulted in a medical need for weight reduction and, in the doctor's opinion, surgery appears to be the only way to accomplish the targeted weight loss.