I read on this forum yesterday that a leak in a sleeve only happens shortly after surgery. It never happens months/years later. Is this true? Does anyone have any links/research supporting that? One of my biggest fears of having the sleeve is the possibility of a leak. BUT I honestly don't fear it happening immediately following surgery, I trust my surgeon 110%, she has never had a leak. I fear it happening 20,30,40 years down the road. Is that possible? I tried to find info online, but haven't found anything...I also tried to email my surgeon to ask her, but the way my insurance is set up, I have to email my PCP. Who could then ask the surgeon to call/email me, but that could take up to a week or more and I'm a very impatient person lol. I guess it makes sense that it wouldn't be likely to happen once the stomach is healed...but I would think it could still be a possibility if someone were to drink lots of soda, coffee, alcohol, etc...???

My surgeon told me it was not likely to happen unless I did some crazy things like take lots of ibuprofen with whiskey. Anything that would of made my old stomach bleed.

In the vast majority of cases a leak is only a concern the first few weeks after surgery. That being said though, there is a lovely woman on here who had a leak several months after surgery and then something like over a year after surgery, so I hesitate to say that you only have to worry about it immediately or if you do anything crazy with your sleeve. My understanding is she did nothing wrong and had a major leak twice, neither of which was right after surgery.

I stopped worrying about a leak at about two months. At that point you should be healed enough that there shouldn't be an issue with any leaks and if your surgeon, like mine, has never once had a leak, it is likely something that you shouldn't trouble your pretty little head over at all (at least that's what I told myself!).

Also, keep in mind, you probably can't find research on 20, 30, 40 years in the future because this is a procedure that has no data from those time periods because the surgery is new. Strictly speaking the way our body heals, there should not be a chance of a leak in the future, however that is part of the risk of having a surgery that there isn't decades of data available for. Could in theory we bust open our stomachs 30 years in the future? Sure I suppose so, but it would really take a major break in the way our bodies work and our understanding of healing for that to happen, so I am confident that the chance of a problem far into the future is really slim to none.