Lap Band arrives in Manatee
TIFFANY ST. MARTIN
Herald Staff Writer - March 23, 2006
Eileen Gentile’s family planned to take a cruise to Europe this summer, but they thought the money they’d set aside could be better spent - on Gentile’s well-being.
They opted to postpone their trip and spend the saved money on a weight-loss surgery new to Manatee Memorial Hospital. Gentile underwent the minimally invasive procedure March 3 - just the second day doctors performed Lap Band surgery at the Bradenton hospital.
Manatee Memorial is the first hospital in the area to offer Lap-Band surgery, says Bonnie Murphy, the hospital’s Surgical Weight Loss Center coordinator.
Michelle Adams, another of the hospital’s first Lap-Band patients, had the surgery March 2. Both Adams and Gentile chose to ha ve the operation for health, not vanity reasons.
Adams, whose pre-surgery weight was 245 pounds, has had diabetes for three years. She’s 41. A week after her surgery, she already was off one of her medications and taking a lower dosage of the other.
Her diabetes was the deciding factor in her decision to have the surgery. She’d heard about Lap-Band surgery from Murphy, a co-worker at Manatee Memorial. Adams is the hospital’s admitting supervisor.
Murphy had gastric bypass surgery before Lap-Band surgery was available, and it worked well for her, she says, but Lap-Banding is “quite an awesome procedure.”
It helps severely obese patients lose and control their weight, Murphy says.
“When I heard about this (Lap-Band system), it was just ‘Yeah, I’m gonna do it,’ ” Adams says.
Neither she nor Gentile ever considered having gastric bypass surgery because of its risks.
Gentile, a financial analyst, says she was happy and overall a healthy obese person at her pre-surgery weight of 330 pounds but, at 36, she could barely move because of her worsening arthritis.
After doing extensive Internet research on Lap-Banding - “I wanted to know everything about it,” she says - Gentile considered having the procedure done in Mexico, where it’s cheaper. But the more she contemplated it, the more she wanted to be close to home, to be within reach of medical support.
Still, she admits that she was a little nervous to be one of Manatee Memorial’s first Lap-Band patients. Adams says she wasn’t nervous but had very high expectations, which the hospital’s doctors and nurses exceeded.
A cut above
Outside Manatee Memorial’s second-floor Joseph B. Ganey, M.D. Surgery Center on March 3, proctor surgeon Dr. Mark Fusco gathered with Bradenton Surgical Group surgeon Dr. Jose Erbella and Inamed Health sales representative Tom Alioto.
Erbella’s surgical partner, Dr. Gary Bunch, stuck his head out of a double door that swings into the surgery room just long enough to say “We’re ready.” Then he was gone.
It was the second consecutive day of back-to-back Lap-Band surgeries, the first at the hospital. The surgery for severely obese patients has been performed around the world for a dozen years, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it in 2001. Since then, it’s grown in popularity in the United States. More than 120,000 have been performed.
The Lap-Band acts as a belt for the stomach. During surgery, which requires only a keyhole-sized incision, an adjustable silicon band is placed around the top part of the stomach. An attached tube extends to just under the skin, and on the inner part of the band is a balloon, which can expand and contract. With a simple in-office procedure, a physician can tighten or loosen the band by inserting a needle through the skin and into the tube, and adding saline or taking some out.
“It’s a hunger-control device,” Fusco says.
Advantages of the Lap-Band system include adjustability and reversibility. Also, it’s safer and less invasive than other weight loss surgery. Lap-Banding is an outpatient procedure that usually requires only an overnight stay, and most patients return to work within a week.
Of course, even a surgery as minimally invasive as Lap-Banding isn’t without risks. An Inamed Health handout for the Lap-Band system says there’s up to a 1.9 percent chance of band erosion and up to a 10 percent chance of band slippage. But the mortality rate of Lap-Band patients is 1 in 2,000, compared with 1 in 100 in gastric bypass patients.
Lap-Band weight loss of one to two pounds a week occurs over about three years, resulting in the improvement of all other weight-related health issues, Fusco says. Such as Adams’ diabetes and Gentile’s arthritis.
Fusco oversaw their surgeries as part of Inamed Health’s proctoring process. It’s in place to ensure that surgeons perform the Lap-Band procedure safely and meet standards set in place by Inamed, he says.
BioEnterics Corp., a subsidiary of Inamed Health, holds the U.S. patent on the Lap-Band system. Inamed Health’s mission includes providing “world-class training and education for surgical and medical professionals,” according to its Web site.
Drs. Bunch and Erbella went through a sort of application process to become certified to perform Lap-Band surgeries. They submitted evidence to Inamed Health that showed they are capable of performing laparoscopic surgeries, then received training specific to the Lap-Band system, Fusco says. Laparoscopic surgeries are minimally invasive procedures that eliminate the need for a large incision, according to MedicineNet.com.
A week before the first Lap-Band surgeries at Manatee Memorial, the hospital held a seminar on the procedure with seating for 50 people. More than twice that number showed up.
Murphy, the hospital’s Surgical Weight Loss Center coordinator, lists the dates of upcoming seminars on her voicemail. When asked why, she says, “You wouldn’t believe the phone calls I’m getting. I can’t keep up with them. It’s great!”
Erbella says so many people are interested in Lap-Banding because “obesity’s a big issue. It’s an epidemic.”
In the United States, about 9 million adults are severely obese. Sixty million are obese, and 127 million are overweight, according to the American Obesity Association.
Murphy says more health insurance companies than expected cover Lap-Band surgery. (Adams’ did, but Gentile’s did not.) Murphy hopes to see even more insurance companies working with Manatee Memorial’s Surgical Weight Loss Center in the future so more patients can take advantage of the procedure.
Many obese people are searching for a solution, something to help them lose their excess weight, Fusco says. That’s where Lap-Banding comes into play. As Alioto puts it, “It’s a healthier way to lose weight.”
At a loss
A week after their surgeries, Adams and Gentile had lost 47 pounds between them (17 for Adams, 30 for Gentile), but the Bradenton women were still on liquid diets then. Now they’re in their second week of eating baby and mashed foods. When they’re able to eat solid foods in another week, their stomachs will hold only a few ounces at a time.
They’ll have to chew their food completely and eat it with something wet, like a sauce - water will make food pass right through them.
As of March 9, neither had felt hunger pangs, and they were eating only because they knew they had to. Adams was amazed by how easy it had been to eat nothing but Jell-O and soup for a week.
Gentile imagined that if she were uncomfortably full, she’d feel it. “Either you’re full or you don’t feel anything,” she says.
She described the Lap-Band system as a tool that has to be used correctly. Both women know their weight loss will taper to a couple of pounds a week, and they plan to make exercise a part of their lives as soon as they’ve healed.
Adams’ main goal is to rid herself of diabetes, but she’d like to reach 145 pounds.
Gentile’s goal weight is 150 pounds. If and when she reaches it, she says, she doesn’t know that she’ll feel like a thin, healthy woman. She just can’t imagine it.
She won’t have to. Her whole life will change, as will Adams’, but one thing will remain the same: Gentile and her family plan to take that trans-Atlantic cruise to Europe sometime next year.
Tags: lap band, gastric bypass, bariatric surgery, weight loss surgery, obesity surgery, lapband, sleep apnea
