Weight Loss Surgery Options and Complications

You may have been trying to lose weight for a long time and not seeing results.
Perhaps you feel like you have tried every diet out there and diets and exercise are not working. When you feel like nothing is working, weight loss surgery seems like the remedy for your desire to lose a lot of weight quickly. In addition to surgery not necessarily being the one stop obesity cure, there are weight loss surgery complications to consider.

There are different complications to expect depending on which type of weight loss surgery you choose. There are several weight loss surgery options available to people now.

Weight loss surgeries come in two basic forms - restrictive surgery or malabsorptive surgery. With restrictive surgery, usually a portion of your stomach is removed or closed so that you are limited in how much food you can eat and making you feel full quickly. Malabsorptive surgery involves the small intestine. It either shortens the small intestine or changes the place where it connects to your stomach, which limits the amount of food that is absorbed. You can have either one of these surgery types or a combination of both during your surgery procedure. Discuss with your doctor which type of surgery is best for you for losing weight based on your health, weight, diet and lifestyle and future lifestyle modifications.

A few that you have probably heard of are: lap band surgery or adjustable gastric banding - which is the least invasive surgery if you are overweight. Others include gastric bypass surgery or Roux en Y, and the more drastic Bileopancreatic Diversion Surgery. Bileopancreatic Surgery is higher risk and therefore not as common as the other surgeries but it is the best choice under certain circumstances as determined by your doctor. Stomach stapling is no longer used as most of these other newer surgeries are safer and more effective.

Sleeve gastrectomy is one you may not have heard about -it is often done as sort of a gateway surgery when one of the others may be too risky based on the individual's health or weight. Sometimes the sleeve gastrectomy surgery will be enough but usually a gastric bypass or other surgery will be necessary after some initial shedding of pounds.

Weight loss surgery complications vary greatly depending on your current health problems, weight and which surgery you choose. Common weight loss surgery complications are vomiting, infections and in rare cases, death. Other complications may include heart problems, strokes, and psychological complications.