What to Expect Following Surgery
Currently, there are no set standards to judge
the success of bariatric surgery. However, the
accepted goal is 25 percent reduction of the starting
body weight. At this level, most of the obesity-related
health risks are reduced or avoided. Randomized
trials have shown that gastric bypass induces
significantly greater loss of excess weight than
controlled, supervised low calorie diets. Although
it is considered that weight loss after gastric
bypass is maintained in the long term, it should
be appreciated that while the literature is full
of reports of successful loss of weight at two
years, reports of truly long-term follow-up are
few. A recent study demonstrated that long-term
excess weight loss with gastric bypass surgery
from five to 14 years is 49 to 62 percent.
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