If you’re experiencing weight gain or disappointment results after sleeve gastrectomy or gastric bypass, you are not alone. And it is most definitely not your fault. While generally effective treatments, the magic of metabolic surgery depends on some critical hormonal, biochemical changes that happen when the tissues are altered, and those biochemical changes must intersect with your own genetics. The result is a new trajectory and a new body weight “set point,” but it is different for every single person. Yes, there are plenty of individuals who seem to hit the lottery, and their body weight dropped precipitously, they look amazing, and they fill up their Facebook with triathlons accomplished and monumental hikes achieved. But there are others for whom the biochemistry change does much less or is less durable. And that is despite how hard those individuals work at exercise and diet. If you’re in this camp and you’re wondering whether you should consider revising your sleeve or gastric bypass, here’s what you need to know.
What to Understand about Revising Sleeve or Bypass
Granted, no one is perfect, and you may be beating yourself up about how you could have done better with daily exercise and a diet that minimized carbohydrates more carefully. In that case, point granted, but keep in mind those are good principles to carry forward, not good things to beat yourself up about in retrospect. The main effect from the surgery has much more to do with the biochemistry, the environmental inputs, and your personal genetics. So, it is time to think about the future, not the past.
The good news is that there has never been a better time to consider revising your gastric sleeve or gastric bypass. The procedures have been refined greatly and studied extensively, such that we now have very effective, very safe, and quite minimally invasive procedures for jumpstarting excellent weight loss after a past sleeve or gastric bypass.
At our center, and other excellent centers around the country, we have delivered outstanding results utilizing the duodenal switch procedure when the first surgery was a gastric sleeve. That is because these two procedures are very compatible, and there is a 40+ year history of outstanding results and research when these two are done together. As second-step procedure ,the duodenal switch or SADI (single anastomosis duodenoileostomy) procedure is safe, minimally invasive, and highly successful. And this new, gentler version of the duodenal switch has few side effects.
At our center we have also delivered outstanding results utilizing a procedure to modify the original gastric bypass, based upon research about those all-important hormones. Yes, once again it is about the biochemistry. By lengthening one of the limbs of the “Y,” the biochemistry changes significantly in your favor, resulting in significant reduction of body weight. This is sometimes referred to as laparoscopic biliopancreatic limb lengthening.
Oh, and by the way, both procedures usually result in reversal of type 2 diabetes, plus long term weight loss and improved health.
So, if you have been wondering what your options are, you should know that you do indeed have good options that are safe and successful to revise the past sleeve or gastric bypass. Contact the Nevada Surgical team today to schedule a consultation and learn more.
