Surgical Serives

Center for Surgical Weight Loss

Surgical Procedures

CHRISTUS Center for Surgical Weight Loss performs one type of Bariatric Surgery, it is commonly known as “the Gastric Bypass”. The Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass is explained below.

Roux-en-Y gastric bypass
Today, the "gold standard" operation is the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. During the procedure, the surgeon creates a small pouch in the top part of your stomach, where food enters. He then cuts your small intestine into two parts. The lower portion is brought up and attached to the pouch, while the portion connected to the lower stomach is reattached to the small intestine further down. The small intestine then has the appearance of a "Y."

Roux-en-Y gastric bypass helps you lose weight in three ways:

• You don't eat as much because the stomach pouch only allows a small amount of food to pass through at a time. Because the stomach is smaller and can't hold as much food, you feel full faster.
  
• Your body doesn't take in as many calories because the food you eat bypasses a large portion of your small intestine and most of your stomach, which delays the mixture of digestive juices with food.

A side effect of gastric bypass, known as dumping syndrome, helps teach you to avoid highly fat or sweet food. If you do eat those foods, dumping syndrome causes a hormonal reaction that makes your blood vessels dilate. Your blood pressure may drop, making you feel weak and clammy, and you may have cramping or diarrhea. This brief unpleasant experience is often enough to convince you not to eat those fatty or sweet foods.

Laparoscopic gastric bypass
Laparoscopic gastric bypass Roux-en-Y is similar to the conventional Roux-en-Y gastric bypass procedure but is performed with the aid of a fiberoptic tube and light source connected to a small video camera. This allows surgical instruments the ability to maneuver through smaller incisions. Laparoscopic surgery has the advantage of avoiding a large incision and, in most cases, produces a faster recovery than a conventional bypass.

Your surgeon will always decide with you prior to your scheduled surgical procedure date, of the type of procedure to be performed: laparoscopic or conventional.

Our Center for Surgical Weight Loss offers long term results through a minimally invasive gastric bypass surgical procedure performed in the only hospital in our five parish area with the most technologically-advanced minimally invasive surgical suite.

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