SO THIS DOCTOR HAVE TOTALLY GOTTEN INTO MY HEAD AND HAVE ME NOW CONSIDERING EITHER A BYPASS OR VSG (VERTICAL SLEEVE)...I DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE VERTICAL SLEEVE BUT DOES ANY OF YOU GUYS KNOW ABOUT IT??? WHAT DO YOU KNOW??? GOOD??? BAD???? PLEASE HELP!!!!!

I know there is a sister site for the vertical sleeve- verticalsleevetalk.com

they would be able to answer ant questions.

good luck on your decision.

I know that for people with a BMI of over about 55 or so, they recommend the VGS over the band.

I wanted the sleeve and then got really scared once I heard about the numbers...

Chance of death from the surgery is 1/200... In the band it's 1/2000...

Having the sleeve stitch line leak stomach contents happens to about 1% of patients. Not that many considering, but you never know if you're going to be that 1%... And if it does leak, you're in agony and could be in and out of the hospital for as long as 5 months!! It freaked me out.

Also, if you start to gain weight back (which happens over time, look at carny wilson) there's nothing you can do about it but to get your sleeve banded... if you start to gain with the band, you get a fill...

I hear the sleeve is awesome for some people, but I didn't want to get it if it weren't 100% necessary. I decided to try the band and hope it works. If there are complications or problems, maybe I'd convert.

Have you considered getting a second opinion?

Lulutatt ask your dr about the band with plication... It's lots of info on here and people who have had the band with plication. You can search plication on here and get. Some info about it.

The sleeve shows excellent results so far, but it is a fairly new procedure as a stand alone. It is the first part of a duodenal switch procedure that is done most commonly for very high BMI patients. Sometimes the first part of the procedure is done, then after the patient has lost some weight, they go back and do the switch. They found that many patients did well with just the sleeve portion, and chose not to do the switch.

So it has grown into just the vertical sleeve gastrectomy procedure as a stand alone. That is my understanding, anyway. There are quite a few risks involved, you will want to research those and speak to your surgeon about them. Such as staple line leaks. That risk is early on, and once you heal is then of no concern. You can also get strictures of the sleeve, where part of it gets tighter like if you put a rubber band around a banana. I have no idea what the rate of this happening is. The surgeon must decide how large to make the sleeve, if he makes it too large, you can eat too much, too small and you cannot eat enough. There is no adjusting it, nor is there adjusting with bypass.

In the sleeve procedure they cut away about 80% of your stomach and actually remove it from your body. There is absolutely no going back. With band and bypass, they can both be reversed. Band easier than bypass, and many will say bypass cannot be reversed, but it can. It is just rarely done, and it isn't easy to do. My surgeon has reversed 7 bypasses. With the sleeve, as the removed stomach is in the trash...reversal isn't going to happen.

As previously stated, there is a verticalsleevetalk.com site now. Be aware there are many there who were previously banded with bad experiences, and have not much good to say about bands. Do keep that in mind if you head over there. But they would have the most info about sleeves.

A coworker of mine had the sleeve done almost two years ago. What should have been an outpatient procedure, ended up an ICU stay and hospital transfer. The staples in her sleeve leaked and she ended up in ICU. She then had to be transferred to another hospital for a procedure that put a mesh like stent in to allow healing. I know her experience is rare, but it hit close to home, thus why I chose the band. Get all the facts and ask your doctor questions.