The Real Deal on Gastric Banding
- LAGB is helping many individuals lose weight, sometimes dieting isn’t enough, LAGB is safe
For the longest time the child of a good friend of ours had a weight problem. A serious weight problem. This child – now a young adult female only 23 years of age – always seemed to be about 40 pounds overweight for as long as I can remember. Her obesity apparently was dismissed as “baby fat” when she was a small girl, but that excuse didn’t carry much weight (pardon the pun) as she got older. She was only about 5’5’’ and that made for a big, and not very healthy package.
We hadn’t seen the girl nor her parents for quite some time. You know how it goes: work, kids, summer vacation, the daily routine of living. It all adds up to make the days go by. Anyway, we literally bumped into each other after 8 weeks and – excuse me while my jaw hit the ground – this once obese child was now as thin as thin could be. Jubilant, smiling and certainly no longer a future candidate for a heart attack.
The secret to her seemingly overnight success? Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding, often referred to as LAGB. This relatively simple surgical procedure of attaching an adjustable ring to the small intestine has become quite popular in Europe over the last several years and our friend’s child had recently underwent the procedure.
So what’s this procedure about? According to the educational website: www.obesitylapbandsurgery.com which explains in layman’s terms what the LAGB process is all about, “…The Band is fitted around the uppermost part of the stomach, forming a 15cc small pouch. It is designed so that it can be inflated or deflated at any time after the operation. This helps the patient continually lose weight until they reach their goals…” Furthermore, the site lists the following advantages which should make any potential candidate feel at ease:
- No cutting of the stomach
- No stapling of the stomach
- Can be adjusted to patient’s needs after surgery
- Laparoscopic removal possible
- Fully reversible procedure
The method itself takes less than an hour. The child remained in the hospital for 3 days to convalesce.
In the case of our friend’s child, the band had apparently been cinched down very tightly. The amount of weight loss on this girl was nothing short of astounding.
Obviously, we were very ecstatic for the child and very happy for her parents. I’m not sure of the popularity of this procedure in the United States, but I have come to learn that it is providing severely obese individuals in Europe with a means of getting their weight off and more importantly keeping it off.
This procedure really interested me. Although my wife never had to inconvenience about more than a few pounds overweight at any given time in her life, I was though-provoking about who a typical candidate was. The website www.lapsurgery.com goes into specific detail regarding the criteria applied to potential candidates:
- Laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB) is intended for those suffering from “clinically severe obesity.” Clinically severe obesity correlates with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 40 kg/m2 or with being about 100 pounds overweight. Although your doctor can determine if you will relieve regardless of your weight.
- Patients should be no younger than 18 and no older than 60 (but again this can very).
- Patients should not have a history of heart disease or high blood pressure
Laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding isn’t a cure-all and doesn’t substitute for proper dieting and exercise. In fact, the need to follow an spend regimen and a proper diet increases after this procedure. Research has shown that – especially in women – weight bag after the age of 18 years was shown to be a strong predictor of cardiovascular risk. It is also clear that overweight people of both sexes, especially young overweight people, tend to die sooner than their lean contemporaries (re: National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference).
What this means is that your average individual who has a bit of a tire hanging over their beltline is not a candidate for LAGB. It’s not a like a flash fix for pleasant exercise and dieting. It IS a viable solution for individuals who can’t afford to be content with the possibility of losing at most one pound per month under ideal dieting conditions.
Mediate the following (re: www.lapsurgery.com )
-The surgical treatment of Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding is medically necessary because it is one of the only proven methods of achieving long-term weight control for the severely obese.
- Eating behavior after implementing the gastric band improves dramatically due to reducing caloric intake by ensuring that the patient eats small amounts slowly, and chews each mouthful well.
- Success of surgical treatment must begin with realistic goals and progress through the best possible use of well-designed and tested operations. These have been worked out over the last thirty years, and are now standardized, clearly defined procedures, with well-recognized and documented outcome results.
Although LAGB has demonstrated an average weight loss of between 40 to 60 percent of excess body weight, there have been instances of the gastric band eroding – which results in follow-up surgery.
Is this the just surgery for you? It’s not for me to say. All I know is the results I witnessed in this youngster who seems to have a lot more worth living for.
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