What does a bypass involve then? I'm sure its all perfectly safe and successful. Just wondering really - mrs nosey, that's me.
Just cut and pasted this bit from my surgeon's blurb and a bit from wiki too. I used to think it meant all your food just went straight thro you - complete with all unpleasant side effects - but not like that at all!
gastric bypass is the most common form of bariatric surgery and a highly effective weight loss surgery procedure.
Through a gastric bypass, food will bypass the stomach and some of the intestine, meaning that less food is required to satisfy your appetite and fewer calories are absorbed.
It is similar to gastric band surgery in that it creates a small pouch in the stomach, which is attached to part of the small intestine.
This dual weight reducing effect means that - when combined with a supervised diet, increased exercise and behaviour modification - gastric bypass surgery could be the most-effective method of long-term weight loss.
Essential features
The gastric bypass procedure consists in essence of:
Creation of a small, (15–30 mL/1–2 tbsp) thumb-sized pouch from the upper stomach, accompanied by bypass of the remaining stomach (about 400 mL and variable). This restricts the volume of food which can be eaten. The stomach may simply be partitioned (typically by the use of surgical staples), or it may be totally divided into two parts (also with staplers). Total division is usually advocated, to reduce the possibility that the two parts of the stomach will heal back together ("fistulize"), negating the operation.
Re-construction of the GI tract to enable drainage of both segments of the stomach. The technique of this reconstruction produces several variants of the operation, which differ in the lengths of small bowel used, the degree to which food absorption is affected, and the likelihood of adverse nutritional effects.
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