How Bariatric Surgery Produces Change

Surgeons first began to recognize the potential for weight loss surgery while performing operations that required the removal of large segments of a patient's stomach and intestine. After the surgery, doctors noticed that in many cases patients were unable to maintain their pre-surgical weight. With further study, surgeons were able to recommend similar modifications that could be safely used to produce weight loss in morbidly obese patients. Over the last decade these procedures have been continually refined in order to improve results and minimize risks. Today's bariatric surgeons have access to a substantial body of clinical data to help them determine which weight loss surgeries should be used and why.

Today, the American Society for Bariatric Surgery describes two basic approaches that weight loss surgery takes to achieve change:

1. Restrictive procedures that decrease food intake.
2. Malabsorptive procedures that alter digestion, thus causing the food to be poorly digested and incompletely absorbed so that it is eliminated in the stool.