Progress

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Banded Plication

So I just heard about this and found it interesting.  There's a new WLS available called banded plication.  A link explaining the procedure fully is here.  Basically the idea is they combine making the actual stomach smaller with a band to bring the benefits of both a bypass and a band.  They fold the stomach over, basically creating one half the size and then place the band.  There's another link here that goes on to say how 23% of banded patients have complications such as slippage, erosion, port flips, etc.  That number sounds higher than I remember but perhaps I had rose colored glasses on.  I found this part particularly interesting -

Recently, the idea of combining the two procedures sort of a “belt and suspenders” type approach was introduced.  The theory behind this technique is that the plication is performed to begin the initial weight loss process.  The weight loss continues as the patient changes their behavior through proper eating habits and exercise.  If the patients then down the road, usually 8 months to a year later, slows to lose all the weight that they would like or if the weight loss plateaus, then the band adjustments begin.  This theoretically might decrease complications associated with the band might as many of the bands complications i.e. port site infection, flippage etc, are related to adjustments of the band.


I admit the idea of being able to do something new a year out of surgery to re-jump the weight loss is certainly appealing.  I also wonder if it provides somewhat of a safety net.  There's still no cutting, they're not rerouting anything directly to your intestines or anything.  So if plication doesn't work, you have the band and vice versa.  Would we see as many band removals this way?  Would we see less people spending thousands of dollars on surgery only to find that it wasn't the right surgery for them?  In a lot of ways, I imagine this would be a money saver in a sense.  It's still laproscopic so they can do 2 procedures in one and if you find yourself stalled,  you still have OPTIONS.  Studies are still early and big studies comparing this procedure to RNY or sleeve haven't even been done yet so it seems fairly new.


Anyway, what really interested me in this is that I heard from my doctor's newsletter that he'll be doing these as well.  I wonder if it's due to a lack of successful patients?  I've always loved my doc and he's big on aftercare and support groups and all that and it's easy to get scheduled for fills and unfills, etc.  Anyway, I found this interesting and would love to hear your thoughts on it.  

8 comments:

tz said...

I heard about this at my pre surgery information seminar with the surgeon's office. It will be interesting to see how this works.

jennxaz said...

it would get you through banders hell much easier!

Barbara said...

Very interesting. It's the first I have heard of itbb

Amanda said...

Hi! And never heard of it before! Thanks for sharing!

Jacquie said...

I actually researched this option before having the Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy. I found a few people on verticalsleevetalk.com who had it done and were sorry they didn't go for the sleeve instead. Too new and not enough data for me to seriously have considered it.

RockBand Barbie said...

A friend of mine had this done the week after I got banded. She was only the second one her doctor had done...which totally scared me, but didn't seem to phase her. She has had about the same success as me, but her recovery seemed much rougher than mine did.

Reggie said...

I have heard of a rough recovery as well.

Rhonda said...

Whew. I couldn't do it. One at a time for me, please!