Complications

There are several complications that can occur with weight loss surgery. The typical complications that we talk about (and this relates to any type of operation) would be bleeding, infection, injury to other organs, and the risks of general anesthesia. Specifically with weight loss surgery, there are some things that we get concerned about. When talking about either the sleeve gastrectomy or the gastric bypass – because both of those operations use stapling devices to both cut the stomach and to seal it, there is a risk that a patient can develop a leak where fluid actually leaks out of that staple line. That’s really concerning because a leak is the most common cause of death from either a sleeve gastrectomy or a gastric bypass. The leak rate nationwide is somewhere around 2-3%. However, the leak rate at well established and experienced practices such as ours is generally about 0.5%.