What is Lap Band Surgery?
Lap Band Surgery is a weight loss surgery procedure. This procedure is minimally invasive. It seeks to reduce stomach size so patients feel fuller faster and are unable to eat large portions of food. Most patients lose about 50% of their excess weight within the first year after the surgery.

How does Lap Band surgery work?
The surgery involves the use of a lap band (ie “gastric band”). The lap band is inflatable, and placed around the upper part of the stomach. This results in:

(a) the stomach becomes smaller and therefore you eat less, and

(b) a little pouch being created by the cinching of the top part of the stomach. This little pouch slows down the emptying process into the stomach.

These two factors cause patients to eat less and feel fuller for a longer time.

The lap band is placed with thin surgical instruments and small incisions under the skin. These surgical instruments have small cameras that enable the gastric lap band to be positioned around the top part of the stomach without cutting or stapling, and thus the patients can recover faster.

Gastric Bypass vs. Lap Band
A popular weight loss surgery is “Gastric Bypass”. Like lap band surgery, gastric bypass also creates a small pouch at the top of the stomach but using surgical staples. Unlike lap band surgery, in gastric bypass the small pouch is connected directly to the middle portion of the small intestine, bypassing the rest of the stomach and the upper portion of the small intestine.

Therefore it is obvious that gastric bypass has some serious risks, such as:

(i) cutting and re-connecting of stomach and intestines
(ii) possible intestinal leak, hernias, dumping syndrome or food intolerance
(iii) malabsorption of nutrients, since food does not enter the entire length of small intestine where most of the nutrients and calories are absorbed.

By contrast, since lap band surgery involves no cutting or re-connecting of stomach or intestines, there are fewer surgical risks and a lower rate of of intestinal leak, hernias, dumping syndrome or food intolerance. There is also no malabsorption of nutrients.

Lap band surgery has the further advantage of being able to adjust the size of the stomach. Once the patient loses weight the band must be tightened to ensure the person keeps losing the weight. If a patient gains weight the band must then be loosened by the doctor. Thus the lap band can be customized to suit individual weight loss goals.

Because the Lap-Band is an implantable device, it does carry a small risk of slippage (causing complete blockage of the gastric pouch) or erosion into the stomach (causing weight loss to stop). In either case, another laparoscopic surgery would be required to re-position or remove the band.

A doctor performing LAP-BAND surgery should be board certified in general surgery by The American Board of Surgery, and should have extensive additional training in bariatric — weight loss — surgery. Allergan, Inc., the manufacturer of the LAP-BAND system, which provides training in its product for surgeons, has a guide for prospective patients that includes information about finding a surgeon.

Although weight loss surgery is endorsed by the National Institutes of Health as the only effective treatment for morbid obesity, not all insurance policies cover the cost of weight loss surgery. Those that do will often require that you provide extensive documentation about your health, along with a letter from one of our physicians stating that your surgery is a “medical necessity.”

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