What Surgical Procedures For Weight Loss (Other Than Bariatric Surgery) Are Available?
Dr. Kaplan answers the question: 'Other Surgeries For Weight Loss?'
February 1, 2009 -- Question: What surgical procedures for weight loss (other than bariatric surgery) are available?
Answer: Specifically for weight loss, there really isn't any other one that's available. People think about liposuction as perhaps playing a role, but liposuction at most can lead to about a 10- or 12-pound weight loss, and that's with very aggressive liposuction, so it's more of a sculpting procedure than it is a weight loss procedure, even though you lose a little bit of weight.
There are a variety of different devices, medical devices and endoscopic approaches that are being developed, but none of them is quite ready for general clinical use.
And so what we're left with really is the three major bariatric procedures are the only ones that are effective for weight loss, the gastric bypass, the gastric banding, and the sleeve gastrectomy. There are variants of each of those operations that people use under different names, but those are the basic three.
