Risks and Complications

There are risks and complications associated with gastric bypass surgery. The surgery has almost an eight percent complication rate in the peri-operative period. Fortunately, life-threatening complications are rare. The national death rate for bariatric surgery is about 0.5 percent, or one out of every 200 patients.

Complications vary on whether the open, or traditional, incision is used or laparascopic surgery is done. Talk with your surgeon about the percentage of patients who experience these complications. Complications include but are not limited to:

• An intestinal leak. This is serious and usually requires another surgeryto fix the problem.
• Serious bleeding that requires blood transfusion or further surgery.
• Infection of the surgical wound. These complications can be difficult to treat and might require antibiotics and special wound care.
• A pulmonary embolism, or blood clot that lodges in the lung, is a serious complication. Blood thinners and special stockings are used after surgery to lessen the chance of blood clots forming.
• An abscess in the abdomen is a very rare infection inside your abdomen. Sometimes these abscesses can be drained and other times they require surgery to drain the infection.
• Incisional hernias. Corrective hernia surgery can be performed after the patient has lost most of his/her weight.
• Narrowing of the stomach and small intestine connection might become evident around four to eight weeks after surgery. This can usually be corrected with a procedure.
• Blockage of your intestines because of scarring is rare, but can happen.
• Some patients might develop an ulcer. Ulcers can be painful and cause bleeding.
• Hair loss is often noticed three to six months after surgery. It is rarely noticeable to others, and usually stops after several weeks. The lost hair does grow back.
• Patients might develop nutritional deficiencies like anemia, osteoporosis, and metabolic bone disease. Continually monitoring nutritional health and taking supplements is important in averting these deficiencies.
• Patients may also develop a lactose deficiency after surgery, even though they did not have one before.
• Patients might develop gallstones.
• Many patients choose to have the excess skin resulting from extreme, rapid weight loss removed by a plastic surgeon. Additional surgeries like this result in additional costs, which might or might not be covered by insurance.