Rafał Mulek

bariatric surgery

It will not be exaggerated to say that obesity is a real plague of the 20th and 21st centuries. The data concerning obesity presented by the WHO are depressing.

 10 facts about obesity - according to WHO

If you wanted to answer in one sentence what a surgeon treating a patient with obesity does to him, they could admit that he alters human's life.

Moreover, it will be no exaggeration to say that bariatric surgery is currently the only treatment that gives obese patients the chance to cure their disease.

By surgically treating obesity, patients often change their weight by several dozen kilos, which, apart from the purely physical consequences of weight reduction, results in the complete cure of obesity-associated diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea and hypercholesterolemia. As the weight decreases, the risk of cancer is also reduced, fertility improves as well, and it is certainly not surprising that all joints are relieved of the pain of overloading.

As diabetes and hypertension are common causes of heart attacks and strokes, the cure of these diseases also indirectly affects the prolonged life of patients undergoing surgical treatment. The same applies to life expectancy associated with the risk of cancer.

At present, all bariatric surgery is performed by laparoscopic technique, which is crucial for the rate of convalescence after surgery. Patients are able to leave the hospital bed the second day after the surgery, and the next day they most often return home.

The purpose of bariatric surgery is to modify the digestive tract so that the patient receives a lower caloric intake and, perhaps more importantly, does not feel discomfort. The impact of bariatric surgery on gastrointestinal hormones is most remarkable, however. So in diabetic patients, we see normalization of blood glucose levels in the first few days after surgery, and within a few months or even weeks we find complete remission of the disease, releasing the patient from many of the drugs he has already taken, and stopping the destructive effects of diabetes on the patient's body. Among other things, for this reason, we can operate on even lighter diabetic patients, and the term "bariatric surgery" is more and more frequently replaced by "metabolic surgery".
 

Hospital stay usually lasts a few days. The patient is operated on the second day after admission. Already the second day after surgery, he starts taking fluids and mashed foods, and the next day he most often returns home.

In the first year after the operation, check-ups take place every three months, in subsequent years once every six months.

In our surgical dossier we currently use mainly two operating methods:

1) gastric resection surgery, often referred to as "sleeve" from the English name "sleeve gastrectomy", and

2) gastric bypass, in a nutshell called "bypass".

People interested in the surgical treatment of obesity are welcome to consult.