Dr Jennifer Ashton discussed the new Lap-Band approval on The Early Show today.
A CBS news story quotes Ashton as saying “I think what it’s telling us is that the obesity epidemic has reached a proportion in this country whereby diet and exercise and medications and surgery all need to be used in conjunction with each other or we will be seeing the effects not only in our health, but in our dollars and cents,” she said. “It’s costing billions and billions of dollars a year to treat obesity in this country. The actual lap band procedure has been out since 2001. Hundreds of thousands of patients have had it done. We know it has a fairly good safety profile and that it is effective.”
She went on to discuss the differences between the Lap-Band and Gastric Bypass: “A lap band is what’s considered a restrictive obesity surgery procedure,” Ashton said. “A simple band goes around the upper portion of the stomach and makes it more difficult for the patient to eat more food. So it just restricts the volume or quantity of the food the patient takes in. The gastric bypass is what we call a malabsorptive procedure, so it affects the absorption of calories. People tend to lose more weight with the gastric bypass, but it’s a much more extensive surgical procedure, much higher risks. And the lap band is much lower risk, reversible, so it’s more readily available.”
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