Stomach Stapling Stops After Patient Dies

Nov. 6 -- The death of a 37-year-old woman after stomach-reduction surgery has raised new concerns about the potential risks of this rapidly growing operation.

Officials at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston say they are investigating whether a faulty staple gun may have misfired during Ann Marie Simonelli's gastric bypass surgery and contributed to her death days later. They have suspended the popular surgery while the investigation continues.

Dr. Anthony Whittemore, chief medical officer at the hospital, said the ban on laproscopic bypass surgery was a safety precaution that would not necessarily be permanent.

"We temporarily halt this activity as a means of coping with this particular situation till we understand what actually occurred," Whittemore said.

Simonelli, of Lawrence, Mass., died Oct. 23, three days after undergoing the gastric bypass surgery in an attempt to fight obesity.

Gastric bypass surgery, more commonly known as stomach stapling, is a booming industry. The operation typically involves stapling off a large portion of the stomach so that the patient is left with a stomach the size of a golf ball. More than 100,000 stomach-reduction surgeries will be performed this year in the United States and membership in the American Society for Bariatric Surgery has more than doubled in the past few years.

Celebrities such as singer Carnie Wilson and TV weatherman Al Roker have helped popularize stomach surgery after undergoing successful procedures themselves.

Just How Dangerous Are the Staplers?

The Food and Drug Administration, which keeps statistics on deaths associated with medical devices, lists 14 deaths from 2001-2003 that occurred after abdominal surgery involving staplers. However, in most cases, the surgeons were able to correct the stapler mishap so it is not clear what role the stapler malfunction may have played in the patients' deaths.

Dr. Peter Pressman, who performs bariatric surgeries at the University of Southern California, said he has not had any serious problems with the staplers. "None of us [at USC] has had experience that would lead us to suspend the procedure," he said.