Meet our Bariatric Surgeon
Bariatric Surgery
Bariatric surgery promotes weight loss by changing the digestive system’s anatomy, limiting the amount of food that can be eaten and digested. Bariatric or weight loss surgery, includes a variety of procedures performed on people who are obese. Weight loss is achieved by reducing the size of the stomach with an implanted medical device (gastric banding) or through removal of a portion of the stomach (sleeve gastrectomy or biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch) or by resecting and re-routing the small intestines to a small stomach pouch (gastric bypass surgery).
Obesity is normally defined through the use of body mass index (BMI) measurement. Physician offices, obesity associations, nutritionists, and others offer methods for calculating BMI, which is a comparison of height to weight. Those with a BMI of 30 or higher are considered obese. However, at 40 or higher, they are considered severely obese. To be eligible for weight loss surgery, patients generally have a BMI of 40 or higher, which translates to about 45kg over the ideal body weight for a male or 36kg over for a female.