Bariatric surgery is a metabolic surgery for long term weight loss. It is performed for the morbidly obese group of patients to help in weight loss and remission of obesity related complications. The safety of bariatric surgery is well established and improved recently because of well defined protocols, better surgeon training and modern surgical equipment and anaesthesia techniques. The current risk of major complications is less than 0.2 % and the overall morbidity is comparable to any other elective surgical procedure. There is no need for prolonged hospitalisation or routine ICU stay in every patient.
Since this surgery is an elective surgery, a detailed pre operative work up is done for all patients. This helps to correct any comorbid conditions and decreases the overall risk of the procedure. It is performed by laparoscopy which means that there are no big cuts but rather small keyhole incisions in the abdomen. The surgery itself is done using modern high tech devices including harmonic devices and stapling gun which makes the procedure fast and bloodless. The stapler also staples the tissue in three staggered rows which decreases the chances of bleeding and leakage in the post operative period.
Overall , the chances of post operative pain, infection and wound complications are very less and this leads to faster recovery of the patients.