| Living With a Small Pouch
Bariatric surgeries are weight loss procedures performed in order to limit the amount of food a person can eat, including permanent or temporary solutions such as the gastric banding procedure that produces nearly 45% weight loss of extra body weight just one year after the surgery.
Like any other bariatric surgery, the gastric banding procedure is one of the options available to treat morbid obesity effectively, rather than being considered a cosmetic solution for easy weight loss in average people, although anyone can opt for bariatric procedures after traditional weight loss measures have failed.
Adjustable gastric banding is sometimes preferred over other bariatric surgeries that divide the stomach by cutting portions. Opposite to those methods, gastric banding procedure is best done laparoscopically using a band or staples to reduce the size of the stomach, taking the name of “pouch”.
After the procedure, the portions of food that the pouch can hold is up to one cup and food must be well chewed to facilitate the natural digestive procedure. Eating more food than the pouch can hold may result in vomiting, although the gastric banding procedure allows over eating after awhile, when the new pouch stretches accommodating more food.
This particular condition makes gastric banding surgery a less effective weight loss method, if the patient is able to face the initial vomiting to make it possible to stretch the pouch by eating more over time. Banding is considered a restrictive procedure, and like others, the individual may or not achieve significant weight loss.
Furthermore, even being a non-invasive surgery, a gastric banding procedure may have possible complications including nausea, vomiting, and obstruction if the food is not well-chewed, infection, a bleeding ulcer, blood clots, development of gallstones and even pneumonia or other health conditions.
When vertical gastric banding procedure is the surgery option, the complications may also include the breakdown of the staples' line and eventual erosion of the band. Adjustable gastric band surgery has the risk of saline leakage or having the pouch enlarged. Stomach juices may leak into the abdomen in a very few are cases, making it necessary for emergency surgery.
However, other bariatric surgery risks are reduced, because the laparoscopic gastric banding procedure does not require any incisions in the stomach wall, although risks associated to other medical conditions can only be determined upon individual examination.
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