Thread: Gastric Bypass On Teens

Do you think obese teenagers should consider gastric bypass to lose weight? I read an article about this and I think it's too risky and most of all, expensive. I don't understand the whole process but how can a patient get a gastric bypass?

I think FDA approved lap band for teens 18 years old and older but I don't know about gastric bypass.

In my opinion, I think they are way too young to consider a major surgery like this. Although, in special cases like if their health is at risk because of their weight, this might be a solution for them.

I'm sure the doctors won't recommend this unless it's really necessary. I read some articles about teens who had gastric bypass surgery and they were really happy with the results. I'm curious though. What is gastric bypass surgery? I mean, how does it work?

I not so fondly refer to gastric bypass as slice and dice weight loss surgery. They basically create a small pouch out of your existing stomach and then reroute it directly to the lower intestine, bypassing the upper intestine completely. The person is basically setting themselves up for some very serious medical problems down the road. Yes, there are people who successfully lose all of their weight and have no other medical problems as a result, but these seem not to be the norm. If you go on any number of forums where the main type of WLS is bypass, you'll see that many of these people are still quite overweight or have gained all their weight back, have problems with GERD, calcium deficiency, malnutrition, etc. I know several people personally who died because their bodies were not absorbing the nutrients they needed and their organs eventually failed. I'm not saying there aren't successes, but my definition of success is different than the medical community. My definition is that the person loses their excess weight...all of it...and that they are healthy. The medical community deems it a success (which is why they say it has a higher success rate than anything else) if the person loses 2/3 of their excess weight. They don't care if that person gains it all back later or if the person has major medical problems as a result of the bypass and malabsorption with a lower quality of life. It just matters if they lose that 2/3.

Now, if someone weighs 400 pounds or more, I can certainly see that the risks might be worth it since their excess weight will most likely kill them off fairly quickly as well. For a teenager...even a 400 pound teenager? I just think at that age they haven't exhausted other, less drastic, measures to control their weight. Other than one 18 year study that shows the mortality rate for bypass patients is 40% less than the control group, there have been no studies yet to determine whether bypass patients have a drastically reduced life span as a direct cause of bypass surgery (long term malabsorption with related vitamin and calcium deficiences). So if a teenager gets a bypass, will they even reach the age of 50? Then again, if they're already 400 pounds as a teen, the likelihood of them reading the age of 50 isn't too optimistic either.

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