Dr. Jossart,

Is there any data or written opinions or policies or anything available on the following:

• VSG as band revision procedure
  
• band complication statistices, particularly after band slips or pouch dilation
  

I?ve been fighting my insurance company for coverage for over a year. They finally took the band out but refused to cover a revision. They?ve thrown everything at me from the investigational claim (which I used your studies to refute) to too low a BMI. Now they?re saying that there?s no proof that a VSG is an appropriate revision surgery and have asked me for more documentation to show that VSG is used and is appropriate for band revisions. The only people in the world I can think of who might have information are you and Dr. Cirangle.

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Can you help? Is there any article or statistics you could point me to? Some sort of letter or medical standards or even your medical opinion I could send them for the next round of review? I'm about to be unemployed and getting reimbursed for my surgery would make a big difference for my family.

Thanks!

Britt

go to pubmed.com and search the terms. You can use Dr. Himpens and/or Dr. Rosenthal as I believe they have both published articles on about 20 patients that were band to sleeve. Interestingly, one of the more common operations now is band to sleeve. More publications on this will be coming out in the next two years.

Thanks Dr. Jossart! Dr. Himpens has a new study he published last month. I emailed him and he's going to send me a copy. Take that Office of Personnel Management! I'm not giving up until they make sure they have a clear policy in place so nobody has to go through a year of misery and insurance appeals like I did.