History of gastric bypass surgery

Surgery is a medical practice that has been used by humans for thousands, and it keeps on evolving to accommodate more needs and increase survival rates. Millions of people undergo surgery every year for various reasons, including weight loss and beauty. The first weight –loss surgery was performed in 1954 by DR. A.J Kremen, and it was a Gastric Bypass Surgery.

DR Kremen’s surgery involved connecting the patient’s upper and lower intestines to bypass the area where calories are absorbed. Later in 1963, Drs. Payne, DeWind and Commons improved the procedure by adding a jejunocolic shunt.

The improved procedure connected the upper small intestines to the colon and was referred to as a Jejuno-ileal Bypass. The new technique had better results than the first Gastric Bypass, but there was a need for improvement because patients experienced uncomfortable medical problems like uncontrollable diarrhoea.

The mini-gastric bypass technique developed by Drs. Mason and Ito in 1967 also showed weight loss results, but patients experienced a lot of complications, including anaemia, vitamin deficiency and anastomotic leaks. The mini-gastric bypass technique would later undergo some alterations that produced the Roux-en-Y procedure. Drs.Scopinaro and Gianetta developed the Roux-en-Y in 1996 as an improvement of the mini-gastric bypass that involved a stapled stomach and bypassing the small intestine. Roux-en-Y procedure loops from the upper stomach to the small bowel to reduce the complications experienced in the mini-gastric bypass.

Modern gastric bypass techniques started taking shape in the early 1990s after the introduction of the Gastric Band by Drs.Kuzmac and Yap and the Duodenal Switch by Drs. Hess and Marceau. Weight-loss bariatric surgeries started to gain popularity in the late 1990s when public figures like Roseanne Barr and Carni Wilson publically announced that they had undergone the surgery.

Another success story that helped in the popularisation of the surgery was when Al Roker, of The Today Show, lost 100 pounds. This single surgery led to a 40% increase in the number of gastric bypass surgeries completed that year compared to the previous year. A lot of people are now opting for gastric bypass surgeries as a solution to their weight loss problems, and more hospitals are now offering the services. Getting gastric bypass abroad is another option you can consider if you are not satisfied with the local facilities.

The modern gastric bypass surgeries use complex mechanisms to give better weight loss results with no side effects. Patients who have undergone this surgery also experience a change in their behaviour like reduction in hunger and feeling full after eating small amounts of food. The behaviour changes also help in weight reduction as one can start enjoying healthy foods and lose most of their improper food cravings.

The changes in behaviour are as a result of changes in in hormones like ghrelin, GIP, GLP and PPY and the neural signals that the GI tracts produce to communicate with the hunger centre of the brain. People who have undergone a gastric also end up avoiding foods with high sugar concentration due to symptoms such as diarrhoea, light-headedness, heart palpitations and other symptoms.