What are the risks of gastric bypass (weight-loss) surgery?

Gastric bypass surgery can be a life-saving procedure, but like any major operation it has risks. Find out what they are with bariatric surgeon James "Butch" Rosser Jr., MD.

Transcript

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Weight gain or weight regain is one of those long-term risks. You can actually lose your investment.

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You put your life on the line in consideration of a surgical procedure, and then you gain the weight back.

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OK. You decided you think that gastric bypass surgery is the thing for you. You have to ask yourself this question.

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What are the risks involved in having this procedure? Well, here they are. You have to think in terms of two types of risk,

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short-term risks that happen in the immediate post-operative period, and that can be from day one to two weeks,

00:43

and the long-term risks, that can go out for many years. Let's take a short-term risks first.

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Well, the number one thing that would scare me to death, and when I had my surgery, I was worried about, was the first 24 hours and whether or not

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the new connections that the doctor put together, would they leak?

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And that's the thing you worry about because a leak can really kill you if you don't jump on top.

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So I worry about a leak. The other thing I worry about, and that's a little farther out, is that the new connections

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can shrink down. Or actually, you can develop something called strictures. In other words, the opening between the new connections

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gets smaller. So we look at that. Now, that happens, as I said before, a little bit later. Now, the next thing that can happen is you can get an ulcer.

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And the ulcer can bleed. And this ulcer usually resides in your new stomach, where the connection between the new stomach

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and the small intestine reside. Now, you've got to think about the long-term complications

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or risk factors. And the one that everybody overlooks is the fact that you have to take your vitamins.

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Once you have a certain part of your intestine bypassed, you don't get important vitamins, like B12, folate, et

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cetera. That means you have to take them. Like your mother said, take your vitamins, and you definitely have to do that the rest of your life.

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Now, you can miss them sometimes. I miss them sometimes. But therefore, that doesn't mean you can let it go.

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Now, the next long-term risk and the one that we always are concerned about is whether or not

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you would have weight gain. Weight gain or weight regain is one of those long-term risks.

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You can actually lose your investment. You put your life on the line in consideration

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of a surgical procedure, and then you gain the weight back. But that takes care of both the short-term and long-term risks.