For those interested in learning about bariatric surgery, there are some options. The medical director for Covenant Medical Center’s Bariatric Surgery Program shared what they are and how it works.
“There’s a lot of diseases out there related to obesity and it’s becoming a bigger problem and patients that fail diet and exercise. Obesity can be treated very well with surgical weight-loss procedures,” Dr. Travis Eggl said.
Dr. Eggl is the medical director for the center.
“There’s a couple surgeries out there for weight loss, the one that is the most common today is the laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy, which is the procedure where we remove approximately 80% of the stomach, leaving the stomach the size of a banana,” Dr. Eggl said.
“That one works by two different mechanisms. It restricts the amount of food you can eat at one time, and number two, there’s a hormonal aspect to it,” Dr. Eggl said. “It decreases a patients drive to eat. There’s hormones released from the part of the stomach we remove that control you satiety.”
He said patients do have to qualify in order to get the procedure done.
“Some of the big criteria are they have to have a body mass index of 40 or higher, or 35 or higher with some of the obesity related comorbidities, such as sleep apnea, heart disease, diabetes, those are just to name a few,” he said.
Dr. Eggl explained a normal BMI is about 19 to 25.
After surgery, Dr. Eggl said he hears positive things from his patients.
“They’re all very happy, after their surgery, especially 6 months out, they’re all very happy with the weight loss and the ability to get off of a lot of the medications and improve their quality of life,” he said.
“Post-surgical, there’s obviously a big change in the diet, and they have a lifetime of looking forward to getting rid of a lot of medical problems,” Dr. Eggl added.
If you’re interested in learning more about what they do, give them a call at (806)771-2222 to get more information about the seminars they have on weight loss surgery. They also have seminars about reflux surgeries they do.
