Gastric Lap Banding Overview

Gastric lap banding, also referred to as Lap-Band®, can help you lose excess body weight, improve weight-related health conditions and enhance the quality of your life. Using a unique device, surgeons reduce the stomach capacity and restrict the amount of food that can be consumed at one time. It's adjustable, reversible, and the only weight-loss surgery approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)! In addition, gastric lap banding system procedure does not require stomach cutting, stapling or gastrointestinal re-routing to bypass normal digestion, making it the safest, least invasive, and least traumatic of all weight loss surgeries. Some of the other advantages of gastric banding include:

• Fewer side effects
• Least invasive surgical option with minimal trauma
• Small incisions and minimal scarring
• Reduced patient pain, length of hospital stay and recovery period
• Reduced risk of hair loss
• No "dumping syndrome" related to dietary intake restrictions
• Adjustable gastric banding procedure without additional surgery
• Reversible and removable at any time
• Allows individualized degree of restriction for ideal rate of weight-loss
• Supports pregnancy by allowing stomach outlet size to be opened to accommodate increased nutritional needs
• Only surgical option designed to help maintain long-term weight loss
• Stomach and other anatomy are generally restored to their original forms and functions

Gastric Lap Banding Surgery Details

Surgeons use laparoscopic techniques in gastric banding to wrap a band around the patient's stomach. A narrow camera is then passed through a port so the surgeon can view the operative site on a nearby video monitor. The band is fastened around the upper stomach to create the new stomach pouch that limits and controls the amount of food you eat. Finally, it is locked securely in a ring around the stomach.

Once around the stomach, tubing connects the system to an access port fixed beneath the skin of your abdomen. By doing so, it allows surgeons to change the stoma (stomach outlet) size by adding or subtracting saline (salt water) inside the inner balloon through the access port. This adjustable gastric banding procedure helps determine the rate of weight loss. If the band is too loose and weight loss is inadequate, adding more saline can reduce the size of the stoma to further restrict the amount of food that can move through it. If the band is too tight, the surgeon will remove saline to loosen it and reduce the amount of restriction.

The diameter of the band can be modified to meet your individual needs, which can change as you lose weight. For example, pregnant patients can expand their band to accommodate the growth of both mom and baby.

For more details on the surgical process, click here.