Greetings,

my nutritional consultant suggested I get my B12 level checked prior to surgery. So far my surgeon has not suggested any additional blood checks.

is there any helpful blood screenings I should request during my annual physical next week? Vitamin screenings or other non-annual physical standard (lipids, CBC, A1C, vitamin D)

I am looking at surgery either late September or early October.

I did not have special pre-op blood work. I even asked about it, they said if I had deficiencies before surgery it would be in my medical records. I had normal pre-surgery testing done. Basically a physical and basic blood work.

41 minutes ago, kcuster83 said:

I did not have special pre-op blood work. I even asked about it, they said if I had deficiencies before surgery it would be in my medical records. I had normal pre-surgery testing done. Basically a physical and basic blood work.

My dr does not routinely do blood work for nutritional deficiency- just standard general blood work.

1 minute ago, KimA-GA said:

My dr does not routinely do blood work for nutritional deficiency- just standard general blood work.

I don't think mine does either, although i did have an iron deficiency before surgery that he knew about. So he must have checked at some point. haha Who knows, I guess it doesn't matter if you are deficient before surgery because either way after surgery you will need the supplements.

My surgeon did order a few labs pre-op, but nothing nutritionally related. They reviewed my labs sent over by my pcp & endocrinologist (I know because they asked me about my prescription for my Vitamin D and my lab levels for that test) and told me at my initial meeting they didn’t need anything else. I would say if the surgeon didn’t request anything further - you should be good.

it's been a few years, but I think the pre-op screening was more basic panels - like metabolic panels, glucose, etc. After surgery they started doing all the nutritional ones.

I had to have full bloodwork right before surgery and now every 3 months:

• complete blood count,
• serum electrolytes with creatinine and glucose
• iron, iron saturation, TIBC, ferritin
• vitamin B1
• vitamin B12
• folic acid
• ionized calcium and PTH levels
• And more...

With a sleeve, your really don't need much of anything as it doesn't have a great impact on our vitamin/mineral absorption. B12 is good to do because many programs suggest supplementing that because that's what they do for their bypass patients, who do tend to malabsorb it. But occasionally a sleeve patient winds up being short, too, because they naturally are short on it.

Several years before I had my VSG, our doc added vitamin D to their pre op screen because of the amount of deficiency they were finding post op (they primarily do the DS which malabsorbs D along with others, so that was expected,) but they didn't really know how prevalent it was pre op, and they wanted to get a better handle on how much of the post op deficiency they were seeing was existing pre op, and how much was a result of the surgery. This to lead into better tailoring their supplement recommendation.

The only other thing would be the iron levels, which I expect are part of your annual draw.

Interesting. My surgeon did a complete metabolic workup pre-surgery. I assumed to have a baseline.

I had no specific blood tests pre-op but have the ones other people have mentioned post-op. I think a lot of centres lump sleevers in with bypass patients although they are such different procedures. I have followed my programme stipulations religiously so far with supplements but honestly at 9 months out from a sleeve I am eating so much proper food that I will probably give up on supplements soon, if only to see what my blood levels are like without them!

Interesting. My surgeon did a complete metabolic workup pre-surgery. I assumed to have a baseline.

Mine did too. For both the sleeve and then revision. I think it is safe practice since both are major surgeries.

I had a blood test as part of my pre surgical check (height, weight, ECG, etc.) three days before my surgery. I believe it was a pretty broad test (CBC, lipids, metabolic, nutrient, etc.). I remember they took several vials & they still do. This initial test formed the base line then for the subsequent post surgical blood tests.