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What Does Stomach Stapling Include?
Often referred to as a restrictive weight loss surgery, stomach stapling is usually limited to extremely obese patients that have not achieved weight loss results any other way. Conditions usually require that a patient is also healthy otherwise.
The guidelines for this type of surgery usually require that patients have been obese for at least 5 years, have no pre-existing medical conditions, are not clinically depressed, and do not have a history of alcohol or drug abuse. |
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The Purpose of Stomach Stapling
The purpose of a stomach stapling procedure is to significantly decrease the size of the stomach in order to reduce the amount of food that can be eaten at one time. The desired results are significant weight loss over a fairly short period of time. With a stomach stapling procedure patients will actually have the stomach walls stapled together in order to produce a smaller pouch.
In many cases this procedure is combined with stomach banding, or a gastric ring, making it easier to remove in the long run. Although stomach stapling can be used over a lifetime, it is actually meant to be removed once the patient has their weight under complete control. While this is a fairly straightforward procedure, the staples can cause scar tissue build-up, which will need to be removed when removing the staples. As well, when the staples are removed the stomach lining will need to be sewn up making stomach stapling a fairly risky surgical procedure.
Keep in mind that once this surgery takes place, the patient is reduced to eating sometimes as little as 0.5 oz of well chewed food for the first few months. Of course, over time the stomach can begin to stretch again, but too much stretching can actually cause the staples to break. With this, another major surgery would be required to fix the problem. Because of the limited stomach capacity, many patients vomit or feel nauseated for the first few months.
As well, the procedure is not a fail safe to automatically return to a normal weight. In the majority of cases, patients have been known to lose at least 50-70% of excess weight, although this has a great deal to do with the patient’s own ability to change their eating habits, as well as the ability to exercise over a long period of time.
With a stomach stapling weight loss procedure, patients can leave the hospital in as little as 2-4 days and should regain normal activity within 6 weeks. Of course there are always complications associated with major surgery and these usually consist of infection, problems at the incision site, staples breaking over a period of time or even the digestive tract shrinking or closing up, causing the need for another major surgery to repair this damage.
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