“This is not cosmetic surgery, it is major elective surgery, with serious risks.” —Professor of Surgery
Howard Simon, MD
Department of Surgery
CNY Bariatric Surgery Center
Dangerously overweight, continually
exhausted and taking 14 pills a day for
obesity-related health issues, 35-year-old
Sandy finally realized this was no way to
live. Two years ago, she turned to
University Hospital's Bariatric Surgery
Center to learn more about gastric
bypass surgery—an elective,
and extreme, procedure for select
patients who are at least 100 pounds
overweight and have failed to lose
weight or sustain weight loss through
conventional diet and exercise programs.
Life-altering gastric bypass surgery
permanently reduces the size of the
stomach—and reduces the
amount patients can eat to about six teaspoons
per meal. Sandy worked with her University
Hospital team for 10 months prior to her surgery,
to be sure she was an appropriate candidate.
Two years later, Sandy is 96 pounds lighter,
energetic and free of the life-threatening diabetes,
hypertension and high-cholesterol that once
accompanied her obesity.
"This is not cosmetic surgery, it is major elective
surgery, with serious risks," insists Sandy's surgeon,
Dr. Howard Simon. “But in the long
run, there's clearly a survival benefit.
Morbid obesity is the second leading cause of
preventable, premature death. Ninety percent of
patients who have this surgery no longer have
diabetes. Seventy percent of patients with hypertension
or high cholesterol improve enough
to discontinue their medications."
Sandy, who now leads support groups for
bariatric surgery patients, is the first to caution
that gastric bypass surgery is not a magic wand. "But it's the best decision I ever made," she says.
