Tag Archive for 'stomach stapling'

New scar-free obesity surgery is being tested

Published
by
Jana
on June 4, 2009
in Health and Wellness
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Doctors are currently working on a cutting-edge type of obesity surgery that does not require any cuts in the abdomen. It is performed by feeding a tube about the thickness of a garden hose down the throat in order to snap staples into the stomach. 

This preliminary, scar-free method fabricates a more slender passage that slows the movement of food as it goes from the top of the stomach to the bottom part of the stomach. This helps patients feel fuller faster, so they end up eating less. 

Doctors are happy with the encouraging experimental results so far from 200 patients in the U.S. and 100 in Europe.

Dr. Gregg Nishi, a Cedars-Sinai Medical Center surgeon in Los Angeles, said that an average of around 45 percent body weight has been lost from obese European patients, after only 18 months. He talked about the studies this week during a conference for digestive disease specialists in Chicago. Currently the procedure is only being performed in studies. The enrollment for this new study has just recently ended.

Nishi indicated that the results up to this point are moderately better than the usual stomach stapling method. One of the risks is perforation of the esophagus, which actually occurred in a patient at one of the centers. Apart from that, he said that there are no other complications.

An administrative coordinator at Cedars-Sinai, Lillian Gomez, was one of the first Americans to have the new scar-less surgery last year. She was going to have the surgery that is usually performed, until she learned that doctors at her hospital were experimenting with the innovative technique.

Gomez had her surgery in August and has lost 40 pounds since then, going from a size 22 to a size 16. She is still obese according to body mass index standards, but she has reduced the size of her meals by more than half and still feels full. She is confident that she will continue to lose weight.

This new scar-free surgery is part of a medical progression to conduct surgery through body openings instead of making incisions. The goal is to reduce recovery time and decrease the risks for infection.

Initially, Gomez had thought about getting a gastric bypass operation, which is a more complex and invasive procedure that raises the risk for malnutrition, because it repositions where the stomach attaches to the intestines. There is another popular weight-loss surgery option in which an adjustable band is applied to the top part of the stomach to help the patient feel fuller faster.

Although surgery is usually a last resort option for obese patients, more than 200,000 Americans are predicted to undergo the conventional types of obese surgery this year, according to the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery.

Diabetes reversed in teens with obesity surgery

Published
by
Jana
on December 31, 2008
in Health and Wellness
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About a third of America’s youth are either overweight or obese. More and more obese children are being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which is the most common form of the disease and the one that is linked with obesity. In the past, it was rarely seen in kids.

On the positive side, a small study has shown that obesity surgery can reverse  diabetes in teens like it does in adults. There were 11 patients in the study who were aged 14 to 21 and all were severely obese, ranging from 250 to 403 pounds. They were taking diabetes pills and one was on insulin. They had gastric bypass surgery or stomach stapling at five different medical centers. At Cincinnati Children’s Hospital,they were compared to 67 teens who were mostly obese and had diabetes. Their blood sugar was being controlled with diet and medication.

After a year, those who had surgery had lost between 72 and 218 pounds, but none had reduced to a normal weight. Diabetes disappeared within a year for all but one of the 11 severely obese teens in the study, after under going weight- loss surgery, according to the researchers. The 11th patient still had diabetes, but was able to stop taking diabetes pills and needed much less insulin.

All of the teens who did not have surgery still had diabetes after a year and there was no change in their weight or their medication usage, but their blood sugar levels showed improvement.

The researchers said the reason wasn’t clear why diabetes wasn’t reversed in one patient who had been through the surgery, but they mentioned that his mother and a sibling had Type 2 diabetes. The teen still needed to take insulin but was no longer overweight three years after the surgery. Another reason could be that his diabetes was more advanced than the other teens in the study. Previous adult studies have found that the chances of reversing diabetes are better when the surgery is done soon after a being diagnosed. The others were most likely successful because their surgery was done while the patients were in the early stages of the disease.

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