Understanding Bypass Gastric Surgery

Bypass gastric surgery is often done to primarily solve or treat severe or even morbid  obesity and other types of health problems associated with it.

With a special surgery technique, the surgeon reduces the size of stomach and makes it  smaller.

By this procedure, the food will bypass part of the small intestine and by doing so, the patient will eat less because he’ll feel full immediately.  This way, the fact of getting full easily will reduce the calories absorbed by the body and eventually lead to weight loss.

In fact, gastric bypass surgery is just among the many similar operations whose goal is to reduce obesity.

The term generally used to to refer all of these procedures is bariatric surgery.

These operations intend to reduce accumulated fatty tissues by altering the physiological and psychological attitude of a patient towards food and eating.

Will bypass surgery modify normal digestion?

After eating, here is what normally happens: the food goes through the stomach and then proceeds to the small intestine.  The nutrients are absorbed in it before it goes to the large intestine, the place where will be finally pushed out of the body.  The most common gastric bypass procedure, the Roux-en Y gastric bypass, alters this process.

In the Roux-en Y gastric bypass, a small pouch is made on the top part of the stomach.  The lower part of the stomach, which is much smaller now, is connected directly to the middle part of the small intestine. The stomach is made smaller and at the same time, the intestine is cut short, the upper portion of the small intestine is bypassed. Thereby, both the upper portion of the stomach and the small intestine no longer digest food.

What about the results of bypass gastric surgery?

Statistics showed that patients would lose 60% (on the average) of their weight after  bypass gastric surgery.  In some exceptional cases, people having undergone this surgery, say that they have lost 80% of their weight.  Research shows that about 90% of patient who have opted for bypass gastric surgery were able to keep their weight loss after as much as 10 years of having it performed.

Is gastric bypass surgery, riskfree?

Having gastric surgery is not risk-free though.  People having opted for bypass surgery, sometimes report cases of gallstones; in other studies, nutritional issues like anemia or osteoporosis would also been reported.

Every year there are about 140,000 surgical gastric operations being performed in the United States alone.  The results could really be successful, with people being able to get better weight-loss results, however, about 2% of patients would find it very fatal.  In the 2%, one percent could be as a result of complications during surgery.  For example, thee heart is unable to support the pumping it has to do to handle the excess weight or the complication brought by it.

The other 1% cause of mortality among people who tried this procedure, would be about not following the dietary restrictions that it’s very important to follow after the surgery.

After gastric bypass surgery, the body can no longer handle too much intake of high-sugar and high-fat food.  That’s why there is a special diet that those who have just undergone the surgery must follow.  Bypass diet will habitually include foods that are rich in protein but low in fat, calories, sugar and fiber.  Some supplementary intakes of  vitamins and mineral supplements will be required; they will have to be taken to avoid health and nutritional deficiencies.

With more and more people turning to gastric bypass surgery as a weight-loss option, it is important to understand not only the procedure and the benefits.  It is also important to balance the possible risks, and if our lifestyle and our body will be able to handle such a dramatic loss of weight.

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