Gastric bypass / Lap band...has anyone had it done?**update post 106**

[LaSombra]

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It is true that the lap band doesn't do all the work for you. It is a tool to make it much easier to diet. It is still possible to eat around the band and gain weight while, with the bypass, the food you do eat simply isn't all absorbed into your system. Both make the amount you eat at a time less; bypass makes your stomache smaller and lapband bands off the top of your stomache.

The lap band isn't right for everyone and the bypass isn't right for everyone. It is a personal decision. If you are an emotional eater or drink a lot of your calories, the lap band probably isn't for you. Me, personally, I tend to eat too much at a time. That is why I believe the lap-band will help me greatly. I don't like the idea of a lot of the side effects of the bypass, including hair falling out, "dumping" and other things like that.

Like I said, the lap-band is a tool and you use the tool to help you lose the weight. It tells you to stop eating at an earlier time than if you didn't have it. You can't drink right after you eat or it will flush everything out of the band and you can't drink a lot of juice and pop, milkshakes, smoothies, lattes, etc. They go right through. It all really depends on what kind of over-eater you are.

 

[greeneggsandham]

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I have to disagree with about the lap band. First it is less invasive than any of the WLS. How is five incisions less than an inch long on your stomach, a port attached to the muscle in the abdomen, and the band itself is attached just above the stomach opening making a pouch a more invasive surgery?
No internal organs are cut and removed unlike the other surgeries.
The band will and does work if people just listen to their doctors. It is a tool not a free pass to lose weight.

I currently know three lap band and four gastric bypass people. Only one of the GB person lives a normal life minus the supplements he takes daily. One has gained all the weight back plus more after 5 years and the other two have had nothing but medical problems since the sursgery. One lost over 300lbs which is great, but she is 6'1" and weighs 148lbs; she has been in and out of the hospital about 15 times in two years twice on deaths door.

Out of the three lap band people. One has lost just over 100lbs, but she likes to cheat the band so she has gone up and down with her weight lately. One had no issues and lost 140lbs in just under a year and has kept it off for 6 years. The last person started out rough for the first 6 months and had to have a new band put in. The first surgeon put it up to high and she had very serious heartburn issues. Since the new band has been in place she is 20lbs away from her goal weight.

As you can see both surgeries have their issues, but one is not better than the other.

 

[herfrds]

Glad I found this post.

Just had my mother tell me I should look into it.

 

[redhen]

My neighbor had the by-pass done. Man she looks great!(although a bit tired looking..) And she was pretty sick for a bit too..
She lost a LOT of weight QUICK..
I would do this..but my concern is removing part of my stomach... the band just seems a safer option to me...
Not sure though...

 

[Dar]

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hey red.. they may not remove anything... there are different procedures.. the standard here in canada is called the RNY.. the stomach is left in.. but it is called a blind stomach... with the VSG the stomach is just partitioned and made smaller so for this one they do remove a bit but this one is done lengthwise...


80% of people that have the band will have it removed within 5 years... 70% of people tho have the band will have problems with it slipping and "rolling" requiring other surgery to correct (this is when a lot have it removed) .. The insurance in Ontario does not cover the band because of this.

I am still in my waiting list for this.. In ontario we have wait times from 8 months to 18 months for this surgery.. sadly my closest hospital is the 18 month mark. but my time should come before christmas

 

[HHandbasket]

After you have gastric bypass, you do experience looking fatigued and a little ragged for about a year. (Of course, some of us are raggedy all the time LOL.) At any rate, one of the drawbacks of bypass is that your hair falls out. You look like a chemo patient for a while. There are a number of theories/schools of thought on this. One is that the nutritional shock to your body just causes you to lose hair. Another theory is that with the rapid weight loss, you lose a number of fat cells very quickly from throughout your body. Your hairs are held in by follicles which are fed by/surrounded with fat cells, even in your scalp. When those fat cells are gone, the hair follicles become loose and fall out.

If you follow doctors' orders and continue to eat a high-protein diet postbypass, your hair comes back, oftentimes thicker and fuller than before your surgery.

At about 4-5 months postop, approximately 1/3 of my hair fell out. I looked pretty crummy for a while. Many people get wigs--my sister wears them, but she's 2 years postop & has trouble maintaining her diet, so her hair has not grown back.

I am 3 years postop and have gone from a size 24 to a size 6. I've been at a size 6 for 2 years. I am at the point now where I am having to maintain the post gastric bypass diet more strictly, as at this point I am starting to absorb fats again.

BTW, in response to a previous poster... yes, the lap band is a tool. So's the bypass. So is Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, or any program/tool you use. They're all tools for success and are only as successful as the level of work you put into them. We ALL know people who've had gastric bypass and gained their weight back. That's because they stopped using their tool.

Having gastric bypass and having it be successful is a lot of work. It's not a quick fix, though many people in the general population mistakenly think so and see having gastric bypass as a sign of weakness. I can tell you this... my sister was dying. I don't think she would be alive today if she had not had it. She has had type 2 diabetes for years, and sometimes she can't even feel her feet. She would walk from her front door to get in her car and go to work and be so exhausted from the 40-foot walk from her front door to her car that she would have to sit there a moment and catch her breath and wipe the sweat from her brow just to get going. She had high blood pressure and every condition imaginable that is associated with obesity. I am very happy to report that this last weekend, we met up for lunch (we live about 2-1/2 to 3 hours' drive apart, so we meet in between) and went walking up and down the streets of an old mountain gold mining town. We musta walked 10 or 15 blocks total, and neither of us even broke a sweat until the temps got up to around 90! I can guarantee you that two years ago, she could NOT have done that.

For me (I had my surgery a year before my sister), I didn't have the # of health problems she did, but I was well on my way. I had high blood pressure that we hadn't been able to bring down to normal in nearly a year, could barely walk at all due to bad knees (was on my way to needing every-day crutches just to walk and had been using a walking stick for about 6 months when my doctor referred me... and I was only 44 years old at the time). Like my sister, the extra fat within my chest cavity was compressing my lungs, and I could not breathe. While I didn't have diabetes, I was pre-diabetic & the doctors were telling me that if I didn't get the weight down, it was only a matter of time before the diabetes showed up (I was the only one in my family who hadn't gotten it). I haven't used a walking stick in 3-1/2 years now and followed my doctors orders. I can scoop chicken poo and dig gardens and walk for miles and miles before my knees start giving me fits.

I regretted my surgical decision for about 15 seconds when I woke up in the recovery room and thought, "What have I done to myself?" That was the anesthetic talkin'. Other than that, I've never for one second regretted my decision. True, there's some pain, there's some inconvenience, but it's been alllll worth it for me. I've been lucky and didn't have any vomiting or anything like that after surgery, BUT... I did everything my doctors told me to do. Better than 50% of the people who have problems afterward are either: A) Eating/drinking something they shouldn't be because they think they can get away with it; or B) they have a crappy surgeon who is one of those docs that'll do the bypass on anyone that walks into his office with the cash instead of putting the patient through a thorough preoperative lifestyle change educational process which includes dietary counseling for a lifetime of healthy eating and didn't tell them they could develop certain conditions.

The hardest part for me, seriously, has been that in the last 2 months, I've suddenly become lactose intolerant which is *very* common in post gastric bypass patients. In fact, I belong to a couple of support groups & everyone I know who's had the surgery becomes lactose intolerant, some right after surgery, others it takes a while as it did with me.

As far as the lap band... here are the FACTS on the lap band that your doctor should tell you (I know our doctors made it very clear to us). With traditional gastric bypass, medically speaking, you can expect that if you follow the program and do what your doctors tell you, you will have permanent weight loss of approximately 70% of your excess weight within 2 years. With the lap band, at MOST you can expect to lose 40%-50% of your excess weight in 2 years. I have a friend who had the band 6 months after I had my gastric bypass in 2008, and to date, she's still only lost about 45 pounds of the 120 she needs to lose. The program we were in required us to lose SOME weight preoperatively to demonstrate that we'd made the lifestyle changes necessary, and 45 of those pounds includes the 20 she lost preop. So in 2-1/2 years with the lap band, she's only lost 25 pounds. And she practically lives in the gym. Several people in our support group have had the lap band in the last 4 years, and I can tell you EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM is at least STILL 50 pounds or more overweight. It's really a colossal waste of time and money, and when you talk to large groups of people who have had it done, you will find about 2 in 10 that are glad they did it and had long-term success with it. The long-term success rate with the lap band is very low. The procedure takes about the same amount of time as the gastric bypass, and there's only a couple of thousand dollars difference in the cost. Then you have to pay for fills and drainages over the ensuing years. Also, it's only been on the market about 10-15 years, so they don't REALLY know the long-term effects of having that device in your abdomen. Gastric bypass in its various forms has been around since the 1960s, and over the years, both operative techniques and postoperative care and training for the patient have improved TREMENDOUSLY.

I would never, ever recommend anyone to get a lap band.

ETA: To greeneggsandham: No, the lap band is NOT less invasive. Who told you that gastric bypass patients have a long incision down their "stomach"? The lap band procedure itself is EQUALLY invasive (as a medical transcriptionist, I also type the operative reports on a daily basis). They just do not have to cut your stomach, but the procedure takes about the same amount of time, the same number of small incisions (I have small incisions, too... 5 of them... now thankfully very invisible). Over the long haul, it ends up becoming more invasive because of having to go to an interventional radiology department and have your skin anesthetized to get your port filled.... which can also be REALLY expensive...and if you find yourself without health insurance for any reason & your lap band fails you, you're SCREWED).

I go to groups with LOTS of people who have had a variety of bariatric surgeries. I have personally met and talked to a couple dozen who have had the lap band done and very, very few are glad they did it. Conversely, I don't know a single gastric bypass patient who regretted it. Not one.

Also, more and more lap band patients are returning to the OR for a traditional roux-en-Y gastric bypass within 5 years.

 

[greeneggsandham]

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[HHandbasket]

Hi again,

Oh I'm not saying there aren't patients (like yourself) who do well with the band. It does happen, and as has been said, every patient is different. I know two people who are happy with their outcomes and have followed their doctors orders and used their tools well, and it's been great for them. I also know a couple dozen people who have a variety of complaints about the band, the most significant of which being that it's primarily pretty ineffective in the majority of patients who have it done. Overall, the people I've met in bariatric surgery support groups say that if they could rewind the clock, they wouldn't have done it and are highly dissatisfied.

The lack of success overall of the procedure is not a scientific fact, however… that's only my observation from knowing many people who've had it and wish they hadn't.

And like you, a large number of band patients never have to have their skin anesthetized for their port injection. Sometimes, however, and probably more frequently than your doctors want to tell you about, if the port becomes displaced when some of the weight is lost (a common problem with internal appliances of any kind), the port can't be accessed without anesthetic.

I do have to say that I am glad to hear about experiences like yours where it's been a positive choice! Obviously, there must be good benefit to it, or else it would not be so widely performed. I am just saying that I think that for the trouble you go through, only 40% weight loss overall in 5 years is a pretty low yield. For some individuals, that's enough and they are completely satisfied with their progress. However, I was pretty morbidly obese and weighed more than double what I should. It was a low yield choice for me and seemed not worth the trouble.

 

[debilorrah]

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Yes, 70% failure still leaves 30% success. Not a great rate if you ask me. My best friend had gastric bypass about 5 years ago. She got to a size 10 (She is 5'8), and is now a 14. She is happy with that. The only thing I don't like about after surgery is the food restrictions I hear her complain about. I am not heavy enough to qualify, but I don't think I would do either one unless it would solve major health issues. Even 40 lbs ago,I was told I wasn't heavy enough. Good LORD I wore a 24!!!!! How fat does one need to be??

 

[Dar]

Quote:
Yes, 70% failure still leaves 30% success. Not a great rate if you ask me. My best friend had gastric bypass about 5 years ago. She got to a size 10 (She is 5'8), and is now a 14. She is happy with that. The only thing I don't like about after surgery is the food restrictions I hear her complain about. I am not heavy enough to qualify, but I don't think I would do either one unless it would solve major health issues. Even 40 lbs ago,I was told I wasn't heavy enough. Good LORD I wore a 24!!!!! How fat does one need to be??

35 - 40 BMI