Gastric Bypass versus Sleeve Gastrectomy
Even with the most ideal weight loss program that includes diet, exercise, tablets, and behavior modification, the best results that a person can expect is to lose is 22 pounds. Furthermore, they will only be able to maintain that loss as long as they continue the program permanently (Abdelkader Hawasli, M.D., FACS, FICS, n.d.). The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recommended bariatric surgery as the only proven way for morbidly obese patients to successfully lose weight (“Weight Control,” 2010). There are several procedures that are available, two of which are the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and the vertical sleeve gastrectomy. The …show more content…
The gastric bypass consists of two steps. The first step is to staple the stomach to make it into a smaller pouch, while the rest of the stomach remains separated and unused. The second step involves rerouting the intestine so that it attaches from the pouch to a lower part of the small intestine. This is a completely reversible procedure, though reversal is not easily done. With the sleeve gastrectomy, the stomach is stapled to create a long skinny sleeve, about the size of a hot dog. The remainder of the stomach is then removed, thus making the procedure irreversible. Since the top part of the stomach and the bottom part of the stomach where it meets the intestine are left in place, no rerouting of the intestine is …show more content…
It is a post-operative complication where the staple line of the stomach may leak; therefore, releasing stomach acid into the abdomen (not an issue in the gastric bypass since the staples only separate one section of the stomach from the other). This issue is usually caught very quickly and resolved; however, if not found quickly, it can result in death. Also, because the sleeve gastrectomy is a much newer procedure than the gastric bypass, true statistics are not available on how patients fair with their weight loss in the