Losing Weight Under The Knife: Gastric Bypass Surgery

By Author: Vijay K Shetty
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Surgical procedures for weight loss are very popular such as gastric bypass surgery. To undergo this procedure, you need to be aware of some important things and understand your chances of undergoing less invasive procedures compared to others.

Losing weight can be very difficult. Sometimes, people risk going under the knife in order start losing weight. Weight loss surgeries come in a number of forms. They vary depending on the targeted organ, the kind of tools being used and other considerations. Before you consider undergoing this particular procedure, it might be best to understand how it works and what follows when you undergo surgery for weight loss.

The benefits
One of the most common surgical procedures is the gastric bypass surgery. This is done to help the patients to lose weight. After this procedure, you will not be able to eat as much and this is because you will not be able to absorb as much calories from what you will ingest. The idea of this particular procedure is change how your stomach and the intestines handle the food that you take in. what happens after this procedure is that your stomach ...
... will become smaller and by making that cavity smaller, less food will be accommodated. Some parts of the stomach will be blocked, preventing calories to get absorbed.

How it works?
Prior to the gastric bypass surgery, the patient will be administered general anesthetics. It will render the patient unconscious and it will numb the body to avoid feeling the pain. When talking about gastric bypass, 2 procedures can be done. There is the so called open surgery and laparoscopic. The first one (open) requires the surgeon to create a large incision that will open up the belly. It will expose the stomach area where the doctor will directly handle the organ by means of bypassing certain sections.

When it comes to laparoscopic surgery, a tiny camera device called laparoscope is placed on the belly. This is more popularly known as laparoscopy. Instead of one massive incision, the doctor will create smaller incisions (4 to 6 of them) across the belly area. The laparoscope is placed on one of the open incisions. It has a long, flexible body connected to a viewing monitor. Specialized, thin instruments are used in this procedure. Using the other incisions, they will insert these instruments.

Recovery
Compared to the open gastric bypass surgery, laparoscopy offers shorter recovery times and it results to less scarring. In this procedure, there are also lower risks of getting hernia. There are considerations before a particular procedure is done. First, with laparoscopy, you might not qualify if you already have undergone abdominal surgeries in the past. This is also not advisable for people with heart and lung issues. It is also not good for those who are more than 350Lbs. You must also be aware that this is not a quick fix. Once you have done the surgery, you still need to eat right, and after recovery, do physical activities to ensure that you maintain the body you always wanted.

Vijay K Shetty,
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