Is Lap-band Surgery Right for You?

In the philosophical sense, the question of whether something is right or wrong is a question that is not easily answered. While the question of rightness in the sense of lap-band surgery is not philosophical but rather scientific in nature, it is nevertheless not that easy to answer because what is right for one person might be wrong for another. Therefore, the only way to judge whether lap band surgery is right for you is to take a look at the main advantages and disadvantages of the procedure and then determine if the former outweigh the latter from your particular perspective. The rest of this article will help you get a start on that process.

Advantages

The main advantage of lap-band surgery is that there is no actual change happening to the internal workings of any of your organs. While the procedure itself does have some invasive aspects to it, none of your internal organs will be opened or changed in any way. Instead, you will have a band inserted around the stomach that can then be used to gently contract the stomach in such a way as to constrict the amount of food you can have in there at any given point in time. For someone that is nervous about internal organ arrangements or has had bad experiences with previous invasive procedures, lap-band might be an effective way around that particular problem.

Another advantage of lap-band surgery is that you can actually change the size of the band yourself. You do not need to see a doctor in order to have that happen and for that reason your recovery time will be full of periods spent at home rather than in a doctors office. For someone that would have to travel a long way to see their doctor or for someone that is not really comfortable with making frequent trips to the doctors office, this might be another aspect of lap-band surgery that they might find appealing.

Disadvantages

The above point regarding lack of visitation to the doctors office assumes that nothing will go wrong with the lap band. Of course, living in the modern world of health mechanics, this is not entirely a fair assumption to make. A lap band is a piece of equipment and like any other piece of equipment, something can go wrong with it. The band can break, wear down, or even move away from the stomach and surround another organ if too much jostling takes place. Therefore, extra care is required in maintenance and a problem could be very painful for the person involved. For someone that is leery about this type of complication, lap-band surgery would probably not be the best course of action to take.

Finally, there is also the fear aspect. While lap-band surgery is not as invasive as something like gastric bypass, it does involve the introduction of a foreign object into your body. For someone that is afraid of something like that in phobia terms, lap-band surgery once again is probably a bad idea.

April 26 2009 | Cosmetic Surgery | No Comments »

Common Failures of Lap Band

Lap Band surgery has been hailed as being one of the easiest ways for a person to lose weight, but truth be told there are definitely some problems with the procedure. While these problems are not exactly endemic or typical of lap band surgeries, they are problems that can cause intense problems for the people that have undergone the surgery and for that reason are failures that people should know about before they actually go ahead and have the surgery done. The two most common failure of lap band would have to be migration errors and erosion errors.

The migration error is an error that takes place when the band that is being used actually ends up moving from one part of the stomach to another. The whole point of the lap band surgery is that when the band is inserted into the body, it can then be used to constrict the stomach and in doing so it can then be used by the person with the band to regulate the amount of food that they take in. However, the band is operating in an area of the body that does not have a large amount of friction and for that reason the natural movements of the human body over time can cause the band to move from one part of the stomach to another or even get dislodged from the stomach entirely in severe cases. This not only completely cancels the effectiveness of the band, but it also means that another operation needs to be scheduled in order for the doctor to go in and replace the band or maybe even remove it entirely if that is what the patient now wants.

The erosion error is an error that has similar results, although for a different reason. Rather than moving out of position or falling off where it is supposed to be, a band that experiences an erosion error actually sees part of the material within the band disappear entirely. This happens because of the friction forces such as they are between the stomach and other parts of the body and the band. When the person moves, the band rubs against these different parts. Over the course of time, the creation of that type of force can create holes in the layering of the band, causing parts of the band to erode away. If the error is particularly bad, these parts can then be absorbed by the body and potentially create some feelings of illness as a result. The erosion error is usually more serious than the migration error because of this possibility.

These are the two main common failures of lap band and of course they are not mutually exclusive events. If a person is particularly unlucky they can experience both errors and be in a very bad state. This is why it is important to know about these errors before you actually agree to have lap band surgery done.

April 22 2009 | Cosmetic Surgery | No Comments »