Five Things You May Not Know About Bariatric Surgery
Today we are going to discuss five things that you may not know about bariatric surgery.
1. Understanding Insurance Coverage for Bariatric Surgery
For those seeking bariatric surgery and looking into insurance as a way to pay for that, you should know that insurance companies have specific criteria they would like you to meet. Namely, having a BMI or body mass index between 35 to 39 if you also have medical conditions that are related to being overweight such as:
- Type 2 diabetes
- High blood pressure
- Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
- Obstructive sleep apnea
Once you have a body mass index of 40 or higher where you're considered to be about 100 pounds overweight or more, it really doesn't even matter if you have these common conditions because your health is considered to be such at risk that generally the procedure is covered.
2. Eligibility for Bariatric Surgery Despite Health Conditions
A lot of patients feel that they may not be a candidate for bariatric surgery because of several health conditions they may be dealing with such as heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and sleep apnea, when in fact these are reasons to seek out bariatric surgery.
All of these conditions are in large part caused by being overweight, and many times we can see these conditions melt away. In fact, we've seen an 89% reduction in five-year mortality; meaning the chances that you're going to die from one of these diseases can be reduced by 89 percent just by losing the weight through bariatric surgery.
3. Minimally Invasive Techniques for Quick Recovery
These surgeries offer a very fast recovery because of the way we approach the patient through the minimally invasive techniques, whether that be laparoscopically or robotically all using the very small little incisions using a camera to do your procedure.
Most of these procedures take only one to two hours at the most, offering just an overnight hospital stay with the ability to go home the next day and be back to your normal activities within a few days of surgery.
4. Dietary Adjustments Post-Surgery
Many people are worried that having bariatric surgery is going to limit their dietary lifestyle for the rest of their life. As bariatric surgeons we all want people to live a healthy lifestyle and eat healthy the rest of your life. But, only around the time of surgery are you going to be very restricted.
Generally, for a couple of weeks leading into your procedure we'll put our patients on what we call a protein or modified protein liquid diet which generally consists of a couple of meal replacement shakes and a low-fat meal. The reason for that is to shrink the extra fat out of your liver that we need to get around in order to safely do your surgery.
While everything is healing up we'll generally have our patients on a liquid diet for a week or two after surgery before advancing into a diet with more soft proteins, and eventually basically a regular diet by the end of the first month.
5. Fertility and Bariatric Surgery
Oftentimes females are worried that having bariatric surgery is going to limit their ability to have a baby. Actually, it's the other way around. A lot of times infertility is caused by being overweight and in fact when patients have bariatric surgery they become fertile very quickly.
We often caution our patients to be very careful and use protection in those first several months after surgery, not because we've generally seen issues with the baby or the fetus in development but because it can really sabotage a female's weight loss if she gets pregnant during that first 12 to 18 months in which her body's trying to reduce her weight.