Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass Surgery - Know More About The Procedure!

Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery is one of the most common bariatric surgeries, meant for weight loss and accounts for close to 47% of all the surgeries related to weight loss.

The surgery procedure of Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass has two parts:

1. Making a Small Pouch inside the Stomach
   • The surgeon divides the stomach of an individual into two portions, a large portion and a much smaller one.
   • After this, a process known as stomach stapling is carried out, where the smaller part of the stomach gets stapled together in order to make a pouch, which would be able to hold only a cup of food and that is obviously a very small amount.
   • Now, with such a small portion of the stomach, obviously people would feel as if it has become full really quickly and hence lead to less eating. This particular strategy is called restrictive as the new size of the stomach restricts the amount of food that it can hold.
2. Bypass
   • The second part is where the bypass surgery actually takes place.
   • Here, the surgeon would disconnect the new, small pouch of stomach from the major portion of the stomach and the first half of the small intestine, which is known as the duodenum.
   • Then he connects that to a portion of the small intestine little farther down. This particular surgical technique is known as a “Roux-en-Y.”

After a Roux-en-Y gets conducted, food could directly pass on from the stomach and get into the jejunum, hence avoiding the duodenum. This helps to curb down a person’s ability to absorb calories as well as all other nutrients. This particular method of weight loss is known as malabsorptive.

Stapling of the stomach along with Roux-en-Y typically is done during the time of conducting the same surgery and altogether are called a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. Normally surgeons conduct the process by way of laparoscopy but when laparoscopy is not possible, they may also conduct a laparotomy.

Recovery process and potential risks

1. Once the gastric bypass surgery is conducted, people usually stay back in the hospital for a maximum of 3 days and then go back to their usual activities within 3 weeks.
2. Around 10% of people come across complications but they are minor and include:
3. Infections in the wound
4. Problems related to digestion.
5. Ulcers
6. Bleeding
7. Just about 5% of people tend to have serious complications that could turn out to be life threatening in nature. Those include:
8. Blood clot
9. Heart attack
10. Serious infection

The risk of complications is minimal at centres that conduct more than 100 bariatric surgeries every year.