What if You Regain Weight after Weight Loss Surgery – Parham Doctors’ Hospital

– After weight loss surgery patients can regain their weight back. The majority of our patients, probably 80, 85% of our patients, lose the weight and
then maintain the weight except for a little bit
of weight gain each year, which is normal. With a gastric bypass
we expect you to lose 70% of your excess body weight, and level off somewhere about
60% for the rest of your life. With a sleeve it's a little less, 65% weight loss initially
and then somewhere around 50 to 55% lifelong, we hope. After bariatric surgery patients
can gain back some weight or in some cases they may even
gain back all their weight.

One of the things we wanna avoid here at Advanced Surgical Partners
is patients gaining back all their weight. That's one of the
reasons we see you a lot, and we wanna see you for
the rest of your life. We see you at two weeks
after your surgery, four weeks, six weeks, a month after that, three months after that, at six months, and then yearly for the rest of your life. The reason we wanna see you yearly is we wanna check your blood work because one of the most important things after weight loss surgery
is taking your vitamins. And that's so you don't
develop deficiencies that can cause problems with eyesight, hair falling out, liver
function, kidney function, and things like that. So it's very important you
get your blood work checked at least once a year for
whatever type of weight loss surgery you have.

The other thing is, things happen in life. Somethings gonna happen that's
gonna stress a patient out and their eating habits are gonna change. The new lifestyle they've
developed will go haywire for a little bit. And all of a sudden they'll
start gaining some weight back. Often patients will come back after they've gained the weight and they'll say, I was embarrassed
to come back and see you.

And we don't care about that. What we care about is as
soon as you start to see that weight come back, a 10 pound or a 15 pound weight gain, come back and see us. It's much easier to help
the patient at that point than it is after they've
gained back 100 pounds or something like that. And may need to consider
having another surgery. So it's very important. We consider patients part of the family. We wanna see you at least once a year. And the good news is we're here to help, and the best thing to do
is if the weight starts coming back, get into see
us a soon as possible. Our dietician will work with
you to get back on track. Our nurse practitioner has a whole group of medications he can use to
help decrease the appetite, decrease the cravings,
and help the patient get back on track. And we can also look at the
tool, the sleeve or the bypass, and see if something
mechanically has changed with it. And if there's something
we can do surgically to help the patient get back on track.

And we are one of the only
practices in the state of Virginia that will revise cases. And what do I mean by that? So back when patients had a gastric bypass 20, 30 years ago, again we didn't teach
them how to use the tool. So they did overeat. They did stretch things. And Dr. Bregman and I
have ways of going back in laparoscopically, even if
they've had an open surgery, and resizing that gastric
bypass, making the pouch smaller again by stapling it, and even making the
opening between the stomach and the small bowel small again. And there are also endoscopic
techniques that are new coming out that we can do endoscopically where the patient can come in, have everything downsized endoscopically by going down through the
mouth into the stomach and suturing that way
and go home the same day and not even have to stay
the night in the hospital to get that restriction back
and help them lose weight. So we have a lot of options and we're always here
for our patients and even patients that have been in other practices that are struggling and need help. We're here for them, too.