Some things to think about before considering weight loss surgery are first and foremost what
your goals are if your goal is to be healthier, if your goal is to avoid future problems
related to your weight like diabetes, sleep apnea, joint disease things like that impact
which procedure you're looking at. Also thinking about how much weight that you have to lose. So
everybody's a little bit different in our program. We try to tailor the procedure that you receive to
what your goals are. It's a tool to help you lose weight it is going to enhance your
weight loss uh your efforts in trying to lose weight and if you follow the right lifestyle
then you're going to be very successful. So I think the first thing to really understand about
considering weight loss surgery is understanding that you actually have a disease and the disease
of obesity. And so that is something that once you wrap your head around that you understand that
you're not alone and it's not something that you chose but it's a disease you are suffering
from and that there are treatment options and surgery is one of them. We offer a broad range
of procedures starting from the least invasive up to more invasive procedures for instance
if you're only looking to lose 20 to 30 pounds over a short period of time and want to avoid
an operation altogether we offer the gastric balloon in which case we just put a balloon in
the stomach which is temporary and can be removed a few months later. The next more aggressive
procedure with more long-term weight loss would be the lap band which is adjustable and reversible
as you step up into more aggressive more permanent operations the weight loss can be quicker and more
dramatic such as the sleeve gastrectomy which does not involve rearranging the intestines but
most of the stomach is actually removed so that is a permanent operation. The gastric bypass has been
around for a long time we know a lot about it it's one of the more commonly performed
operations right now that's a better operation for a long-term resolution of diabetes and then one of
the more common operations that we're providing in our practice now is called the sleeve gastrectomy
with single anastomosis do it in a switch. There's an older operation called the duodenal switch that
had more long-term nutritional problems and a lot of those problems have been taken care of by
doing the less invasive procedure that we're offering up right now but the duodenal switch
does provide some of the best long-term weight loss the best resolution of diabetes and we're
that's one of the more common operations we've had very very good results with that procedure in our
practice. So people are candidates for weight loss surgery based on their weight as well as
other medical conditions that they suffer from. So one easy way to do that is determine what your
body mass index is and that's something that is calculated by your height and your weight
you can easily pull that up on a on google for example look for a body mass index calculator.
The typical qualifications are someone whose body mass index is over 40 they will qualify
for surgery or if their body mass index is 35 to 40 with other medical conditions like
type 2 diabetes or obstructive sleep apnea or hypertension. Diabetes, high blood pressure,
sleep apnea all these are cholesterol problems all these are things that can help you qualify
if you have severe osteoarthritis obviously those are things that can help you qualify
for antibiotic surgery. There's a lot of roadblocks in place with different carriers
so if your insurance plan requires you to go through a six-month program we need to get
started with that and we have all the capabilities of our office to help you with that to see the
nutritionists the psychologists if they require a cardiac consultation or pulmonary clearance
we have specialists that we can get you in to get working on that. If your insurance is not going to
cover it we do have a finance plan available that we can get good rates for you get a low monthly
payment plan and then you can skip some of the roadblocks that are put in place
by your insurance company. After surgery that's probably the biggest part of it all
surgery in and of itself while it seems like a very big thing actually is probably the smallest
part of everything that's how we start but the aftercare is really what's important and so
after surgery you can expect to lose a good portion of your weight and we'll talk about
what each of those surgeries would would be like. You can expect to feel better you can
expect some of the medical problems to uh go away you can expect to feel to live longer live happier
and you need to understand that you need to follow the correct lifestyle
and if you do those things you're going to get great benefit from windows surgery. We want you to
be healthier hopefully your joints don't bother you as much your exercise tolerance is better
you can climb stairs easier you can get in and out of vehicles easier you spend more time with your
kids going to their soccer games, the baseball games being able to walk up and down the bleachers
or even run across the field with them that's my goal for anybody with weight loss surgery just to
live their life to the fullest and to be able to do all the things that you've always wanted to do
without your body dragging you down and limiting how you react to the different phases in life.
I also want you to be able to sleep at night without a cpap machine I want you to not worry
about the long-term effects of diabetes worrying about heart disease and making sure that you're
living long enough to enjoy all the things in life that your goals are to that are set out for you.
We certainly appreciate the opportunity of taking care of our patients and welcome them and look
forward to see them in the office. The quality of life that patients talk about after surgery
is a little bit different for everybody but the reality is everyone has a new passion for life, so
I would say that those things that were important to you before really become important again.