Long Term Gastric Bypass Complications After Surgery

Are you avoiding the mirror everyday so you can’t see the ripples of fat all over your body? Have you tried every single thing on the market that claims to make you lose the excess pounds only to end up getting disappointed? Have you set a goal of losing weight but you end up losing your motivation? Are you losing hope that you’re ever going to lose weight? If you want to lose the excess pounds that much, you can try undergoing gastric bypass surgery (GBS), a surgery indicated for people who are morbidly obese. However, there are special considerations about gastric bypass complications that may come about after surgery.

Gastric bypass surgery is usually indicated for people who have a body mass index of 40 and above and those who have a body mass index of 35 and weight-related conditions. Usually, these are people who did not have weight loss despite religiously sticking to dietary modifications. Gastric bypass surgery is one type of bariatric surgery and is considered to be one of the most effective ways in treating morbid obesity. After the surgery, seventy-percent of people who underwent the operation lost sixty-five to eighty percent of their excess body weight. Not only does this surgical intervention treat obesity per se, it is also known to reduce hyperlipidemia and essential hypertension in seventy percent of patients. It is also known to reverse diabetes mellitus type II by ninety percent and relieves gastroesophageal reflux disease in almost all of the patients who underwent gastric bypass surgery. In addition, gastric bypass surgery also reduces the size of the stomach by 90%.

Although this operation may sound like a heaven-sent answer to all your weight loss problems, it has gastric bypass surgery complications that may make you skeptical about undergoing it. In fact, nearly all mortality rates of gastric bypass surgery result from the complications that follow it soon thereafter.

A gastric bypass long term complication that is common after surgery is infection. Examples are peritonitis and abscess which may occur 24 hours after surgery. Hospital-acquired infections such as pneumonia, sepsis and kidney infections can also occur after the operation was completed. On the other hand, hemorrhage is a complication that may immediately transpire after surgery. Blood vessels are normally cut in the duration of the surgery. If the blood vessels are not properly cauterized before the incision is closed, hemorrhage may occur.

Anastomotic ulcers, a complication that occurs in 16% of patients, usually occur due to limited blood supply to the anastomosis, increased gastric acid, tension in the anastomosis suture, Helicobacter pylori infection, smoking and chronic use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. A handful of nutritional deficiencies such as decreased iron, calcium, zinc, thiamine, vitamin b12, protein and vitamin A in the body is considered a long-term complication of gastric bypass surgery. These nutritional deficiencies may lead to different conditions like anemia, neuropathies, hyperparathyroidism, beri-beri, xerophthalmia and kwashiorkor. Fat absorption is also significantly impaired after the operation.

Long term gastric bypass complications may be a scary thought but as long as you know your surgeon follows the protocol and you follow the restriction after the surgery, the likelihood of complications will be markedly decreased.