Obesity Bariatric Surgery by Dr. Jaime Ponce de Leon.
Bariatric surgery is a surgical alternative for losing weight in people who are extremely overweight and their weight poses a health hazard. The procedure involves the surgical removal of a part of the stomach to reduce its size or restricting the absorption of food from the intestine. There is an option that is a combination of these two methods.
What is Obesity?
- Multifactorial disease of excess fat storage with a genetic basis.
- Influenced by the environment.
- Lifelong and progressive.
- Associated with multiple serious medical problems.
Why everyone talks about obesity?
- Increasing incidence.
- Increasing awareness.
- Improving understanding of the disease path physiology and course.
- Introduction of laparoscopic surgery, and excellent long term results.
Severe obesity is a condition that is often hard to treat with diet and exercise alone.
Why surgery for weight loss?
The aim of bariatric surgery is either to reduce the capacity of stomach, restricting how much food the stomach can hold at any time and so promote early satiety or prevent food from getting absorbed, so that fewer calories are released into the body or a combination of the two.
Both these mechanisms may result in weight loss. The amount of weight one loses, depends on other factors like diet, exercise, lifestyle, etc. Bariatric surgery can help with weight loss of up to 80% of desired loss.
The weight loss is sustained and the surgery also leads to resolution/improvement of associated diseases like diabetes, joint pains, sleep apnoea, raised cholesterol and high blood pressure.