WLS and Labs....(not the four-legged kind.)

I'm getting my one year post op labs done tomorrow! And one of the things I love so much about my bariatric center is they encourage and expect you to be patients there for life. They schedule annual follow-ups every year following surgery for as long as the patient will show up. The surgery and lifestyle change is for life, so the checkups should be too!

yup the practice where I had my surgery also has follow up and labs at 3,6 9 months and at one year, and yearly after that. it's good to keep an eye on things!

This is an excellent article. I happen to be a person who moved states following bariartric surgery and because I am post op, my new PCP handles everything.

She is great and I really like her for general things but I feel like I am teaching her. I come prepared with the list of labs they did at my one year post op in Minnesota and tell her exactly what needs to be pulled.

The scary part is, most PCPs simply are not trained on what to look for and as a patient I don't know what I don't know.

I happen to be one of those people who does a ton of reasearch and I pay close attention to my body mostly because I have always had a lot of medical issues.

I wish general physicians were better trained if they have a post Bariatric patient. I am constantly teaching or questioning other non Bariatric specialists as well.

I for one, would love that link.

Here's the link for you: https://asmbs.org/wp/uploads/2014/05/AACE_TOS_ASMBS_Clinical_Practice_Guidlines_3.2013.pdf

@Elizabeth Anderson RD,

Thanks for this article! It is so important to get bloodwork done regularly, and so easy to overlook or conveniently forget. A lot of us might naturally think about Iron deficiency anemia as an example and figure all nutrient deficiencies are similar: that you’ll feel the symptoms (such as fatigue from Iron deficiency), and that you can reverse them when you start to take your supplement. But that’s not always true.

As you said, some complications from deficiencies are irreversible. You’ll never be able to gain back all of your bone mass if you’re low in Calcium for a long time. You can’t overcome certain types of nerve damage from Vitamin B12 deficiency.

Also, it’s important to remember that you won’t always see and feel symptoms until it’s too late. For example, you won’t know that your Vitamin D is too low even though you could be losing bone mass. Or women may not have any idea that they’re low in folate until it comes up in a pregnancy screening.

Another reason to get bloodwork done is that you can actually get too much of certain Vitamins and minerals. B Vitamins are generally safe, but you don’t want to take high amounts of iron for too long without getting your blood levels tested because iron overload can lead to liver problems.

Thanks for the article! Oh, and one other reminder: even if you have a whole long laundry list of nutrients to test and you need to fill a bunch of vials of blood, you still only need to go to the lab and get your arm pricked once!