Surgical study highlights pros and cons of gastric bypass surgery for seve...( Severely obese patients who underwen...),Health

Severely obese patients who underwent two different gastric bypass techniques had lost up to 31 per cent of their Body Mass Index (BMI) after four years, with no deaths reported among the 50 study subjects, according to the November issue of the British Journal of Surgery.

The number of patients suffering from high blood pressure fell by 76 per cent, diabetes fell by 90 per cent and cases of dyslipidaemia abnormal concentrations of lipids or lipoproteins in the blood fell by 77 per cent.

However 29 complications were reported in 27 patients, including minor wound infections and narrowing of the anastomotic suture, and ten patients had to be operated on again in the four-year period after surgery.

Surgeons at the University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland, carried out the study to compare two techniques and find out whether varying the length of the small bowel limb during surgery could offer superior weight loss.

It had been suggested by several studies that a longer length would reduce the body's ability to absorb certain sugars and fats.

As a result of the four-year study, they now perform proximal gastric bypass as the operation of first choice, having decided that the distal gastric bypass technique, with its longer alimentary limb, doesn't offer any significant advantages but does have a number of drawbacks.

"There has been an ongoing debate about whether having a longer limb offers the patient greater weight loss and we decided to compare both techniques" explains Dr Markus Muller from the University's Department of Visceral and Transplant Surgery.

Fifty patients having laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery were match-paired, with 25 undergoing the proximal technique and 25 undergoing the distal technique. The alimentary limb length in the proximal surgery group was 150cm and this increased to between 200cm and 400cm in the distal group.

The study subjects' BMIs averaged 45.
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