New York (Reuters Health) compared the two popular surgeries for weight loss and concluded that Gastric bypass surgery is more likely to be beneficial than Gastric banding. To support this statement, Dr. Nancy Puzziferri of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, stated that patients who have undergone bypass surgery showed similar results as the ones who had underwent Gastric banding.
The comparison also revealed that though gastric bypass showed a faster weight loss, the result after 3 years of bypass was much the same as the result experienced after 3 years of gastric banding. As far the downsides of these surgeries, one can say bypass is a more complicated and riskier surgery and gastric banding requires exhaustive follow ups, though the pros and cons of these are patient specific to a greater degree.
Dr. Puzziferri and her team, between 1997 and 2006, evaluated patients who underwent bypass surgery and patients who went ahead with the banding procedure. Out of 1,102 bypass patients and 631 banding patients, a total of 1,518 patients were available for evaluation.
The evaluation revealed the bypass procedure was more consistent from patient to patient and they lost more weight at a faster pace and were unlikely to gain weight in the long run. Patients who underwent gastric banding, on the other hand, lost about 25 percent of their body weight after 2 years (whereas the estimated weight loss was 40 percent) that is just about 6.2 percent of what bypass patients achieved.
Researchers add “"Despite its higher operative risk, gastric bypass may be a better choice for selected patients." They also strongly feel that a study on these should be conducted for the next 5 years in order to understand the risks, costs, and the benefits these two procedures can theorize.
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