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Weight Loss Surgery: Is it right for you?

Posted at 9:21 PM, Jul 21, 2016
and last updated 2016-07-22 00:34:55-04

Dr. Elizabeth Dovec a surgeon and director of GBMC’s Comprehensive Obesity Management Program. She says surgery is an effective tool for losing weight and keeping it off.

“Surgery is not the easy way out that is a complete misconception,” Dovec said.

At GBMC there are two surgical options.

“The laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy and laparoscopic roux-en-y gastric bypass surgery,” she said. “With the sleeve, your stomach right now is the size of a football. After that, surgery your stomach goes down to the size of a garden hose.”

Gastric bypass surgery takes your stomach from the size of a football to the size of a thumb.

“So you can only eat 5 percent of what you can eat now,” Dovec said. 

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She said obesity is the root of a variety of health issues including diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea among other problems.

Those health risks are the reason weight loss surgery is often covered by your insurance.

“It’s actually cheaper for patients to lose weight and get healthy than to be almost a drain on the health care system with their frequent doctors’ visits and sleep apnea machines and all of those sorts of things,” Dovec said. 

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