I met a lady recently who had undergone sleeve gastrectomy about 18 months ago. She looked great. However, she was concerned that she was regaining weight. I explained to her that this is quite a normal phenomenon. Many patients tend to reach a maximal weight loss at one year, often down to a BMI of 26 or 27 and then slowly creep back up to BMI 28.
At this point, as long as careful diet and exercise are followed, the patient should remain at BMI 28. However, by the third or fourth year after sleeve gastrectomy, there is a small number of patients for a variety of reasons will start to regain weight.
There are various options at this point. Usually, we would start by seeing whether the sleeved stomach has dilated. Usually, this involves a gastroscopy and a barium meal. If there is dilatation then there are the options of gastric banding the sleeve, resleeving the sleeve or converting the sleeve to gastric bypass.
For more detailed discussions, please contact the specialist surgeons at Central Coast Weight Loss Surgery at (02) 4323 7000