Exactly what your surgeon will do when you get weight loss surgery depends on what type of surgery you're getting. Weight loss surgery works in three basic ways:
- Restricting how much food your stomach can hold at any time. This is "restrictive" weight loss surgery.
- Preventing your digestive system from absorbing all the nutrition in the food you eat. This is "malabsorptive" surgery.
- A combination of these two ways
Here's what each procedure involves.
Restrictive Weight Loss Surgery
The two purely restrictive types of weight loss surgery are called gastric banding and vertical sleeve gastrectomy.
Both operations make less room in the stomach for food right after it's swallowed.
The surgeon uses a small part of your stomach to make a pouch at the end of your esophagus (the tube connecting your mouth to your stomach). This pouch holds only about half an ounce -- roughly the space in a shot glass. It fills up quickly and empties slowly, through a narrow opening to the larger part of the stomach.
Gastric banding involves placing a band around the top end of the stomach. There are two approved gastric banding devices and procedures approved in the U.S. -- LAP-BAND and the Realize band.
