This is the band lying at the very top of the stomach and under there our nerves which when they’re squeezed by the band will send a signal up to the brain and the brain then feels that you don’t have to eat anymore, so that throughout the day you have this feeling of not being hungry and then when you do eat the food that you eat will be squeezed across the band and that squeezing across will further stimulate these nerves sending signals back to the brain saying even more strongly that you’re not hungry.
The band is placed by laparoscopic surgery, there are no large cuts just several nicks in the skin and we leave very little mark. We pass tubes into the space around the stomach and we can watch what we’re doing on a video screen, we pass the band around the very top of the stomach and we connect it to an access port which is lying under the skin. If we inject into the access port, we can add say line and this will adjust the tightness of the band.
Let me demonstrate to you how the band adjustability works. Picture the band is placed around the very top of the stomach and my finger is the stomach sitting there, you can see that it’s quite loose it would have very little effect at this stage. If I then add fluid to the band, you can see how the balloon compresses in on the stomach. I can take the fluid out and bring back your appetite, I can add more fluid and reduce your appetite.
We have another option available to you and that’s the option of sleeve gastrectomy. In doing the sleeve gastrectomy we free up the stomach by dividing all its blood vessels along the edge and then we remove most of the stomach by using a stapling device which cuts the stomach as it staples it to leave behind a narrow tube of stomach. Let’s have a look at how the sleeve gastrectomy is done. It’s done laparoscopically, we can see here the stomach at the bottom of the esophagus, food will normally come into the stomach fill the stomach until you get a feeling of fullness so that you no longer wish to eat more. What we do in this procedure is markedly reduce the amount of stomach available. We divide the blood vessels that feed the stomach and then we staple right along the margin of the stomach to separate most of the stomach from a narrow tube on the left-hand side, the stomach is removed and you’re left with that tube, food will come into that tube fill that much more quickly than it would of the original stomach and you have a feeling of fullness and are happy to stop eating after a smaller amount of food.
On this slide I have my own experience with the band in the background and it shows that we achieve a good weight loss and it’s very steady over 15 years. I’ve also got the weight loss that’s achieved by professor Rudolph Weiner from Frankfurt who is one of the most experienced in the world in the sleeve gastrectomy and you can see the rapid weight loss in that first year or two years later on it tends to fade because it’s not an adjustable procedure. A true result we’re committed to giving you the best possible solution for your weight loss problem. We’re always looking at different options and incorporating the ones which we believe have value into our program. We’re determined to do the best we can for you.
