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Your Weight Loss Journey With GBS/AOS

Your choice must be an informed choice.

Though a popular, safe and successful treatment gastric banding doesn’t suit everyone. Please don't think of Weight loss surgery as an easy option or a ‘quick fix’. Even with support there are occasions when some find it difficult to work with the band, change food intake, change eating habits and introduce exercise which are important for it to be effective.

Maintaining your weight loss in the long term will involve emotional and physical energy and it is hard work getting there.

If you are suitable for gastric banding or bypass, the first steps on your road to weight loss will begin with a comprehensive, staged assessment with some of the team.

Stage one involves a comprehensive consultation with a Nutritionist, Physician and Specialist Nurse Counsellor. This relaxed, non-judgemental and supportive assessment gives opportunity to discuss your expectations and ask questions. It is at this appointment where you will explore issues such as your food intake and eating behaviours and the physician will review any medical conditions.

Stage two,  meet the surgeons. This is a two-way question and answer session that helps them get to know you a little more, explain the procedure and possible complications.

At this stage you are likely to know when you surgery date will be and are often asked to consent to the proposed surgery.

A week before the surgery, you will start a special low fat diet designed to reduce the size of the liver and make band placement easier and safer for all involved. This diet can result in dramatic temporary weight loss. You should expect to return to pre-surgery weight after resuming your normal food intake in the days following surgery. 

No food, drink or smoking is allowed 12 hours before surgery. If you are diabetic the physician and surgeon will discuss your plan of care that may include a ‘sliding scale’.

On the morning of surgery you will be admitted to the clinic. The procedure itself is very quick – usually no more than 30 minutes and sometimes considerably less.  You will be asked to wear special ‘stockings’ that will be provided for you as a cautionary aid to prevent blot clot formation in your legs. 

Immediately following the operation.

You will wake with special wrap around ‘boots’ on both legs, below the calf. These automatically inflate and deflate to aid your circulation while you are in bed.  You will also have a drip in your arm when you wake. The main reason for this is to prevent dehydration as your oral fluid intake is virtually nil on the day of surgery. A drip also provides an easy way to give prescribed medication e.g. pain relieving medication or other prescribed medication. By the afternoon you can expect to be up and around.

You will stay overnight in hospital.  The following morning you will have an X-Ray that involves swallowing some liquid that is visible on x-ray. It is usual that following this you will be able to go home.
 
Following many operations it is now ‘usual practice’ that before leaving hospital the nursing staff will show you how to give yourself an anti-coagulant medication. This is a preventative measure to avoid the formation of blood clots in the first few days following surgery.

We aim to make your surgical and hospital experience of weight loss surgery [gastric banding] as safe, controlled, straightforward and relaxed a procedure as possible.

If you do experience any problems when you get home then please contact us directly. However, we would not expect to see most patients until their first adjustment. 

Band adjustments & follow up

Follow up appointments, regular contact and peer or support groups are an essential component to YOUR success. Weight loss journeys can be frustratingly slow – we want to be thin ‘now’ not in months to come. It is essential to have healthy channels of communication with your weightloss surgery team and fellow ‘bandees’. 

Our team philosophy is one of respectful support following weight loss surgery.  We aim for healthy two way communication.  We don’t pressurise or push and we wait for you to contact us when you feel it is the appropriate time. The speed of your weight loss is not predetermined by lines on a graph or impossible expectations of others. It is a journey that is implicitly yours and the resulting success is totally yours. We communicate and have close relationships with the majority of our clients post operatively and many have commented positively on the feeling of acceptance and positivity they experience with AOS/ GBS.

Obviously gastric band adjustment is an essential key for you to achieve optimal weight loss. The idea is to have enough fluid in situ to help you decrease your intake while being able to sense the restriction offered by the band. Some refer to a point of ideal adjustment / restriction as being the ‘sweet spot’.

Your gastric band can be adjusted easily via the small ‘port’ under the skin below your waistband. (see picture) The timing and frequency is mainly determined by you and you may seek to have a ‘fill’ to increase your restriction when e.g. your weight loss has reached a plateau for three weeks or more, when you have explored and introduced change in food intake and activity. It is usual in our practice not to fill a band before 6 – 8 weeks after the weight loss surgery allowing everything to settle and you to adjust to your new ‘internal addition’.

You are in safe hands with the Avon Obesity Service and GBS. Adjustments are performed by Sharon Bates who has had a gastric band since 2000.  Sharon knows what living with a band involves at a personal and professional level and she is an expert in the field of bariatric (weightloss) surgery.

Causing only little discomfort (sometimes none at all) the band is either tightened or loosened, according to your needs. Adding salt water (saline) slows down the amount of food that can pass through from your upper pouch to your stomach below. This creates a feeling of not being able to eat more as the food presses against the walls of the upper pouch and a feeling of pressure around your breastbone area. This is your new feeling of ‘full’. Removing saline means the lumen is made wider and food passes through more quickly to the stomach below and onwards to your gut.

Band adjustment usually only takes a couple minutes and is performed in the outpatients department at SPIRE hospital Bristol. Post operative band adjustment appointments for our patients are made via our booking line on 01179 80 40 70.

Some people find they never need to have a fill at all. Either their gastric band offers sufficient restriction without a fill or, they find simply having a band in place gives them motivation to introduce significant changes to their eating and lifestyle. More usually clients need a number of band adjustments/gastric band fills. On average you might normally expect between three and five gastric band adjustments either increasing or decreasing the fluid in the band.

Contact us if you have had surgery elsewhere and are seeking band adjustment