i thought my friend had lap bad but when i asked her about "fills" she had no idea what i was talking about. She had "surgery" this past April and has lost 85lbs. She told me that she does have bands on her stomach and she does not get fills nor does she have a port, but part of her stomach is cut and attached to her small intestines is this gastric bypass? But why does she have the bands? She keeps telling me she had the lap band...i don't understand........thanks Nicole :cool:

She may have the vertical banded gastroplasty (VGB). It staples off part of your stomach and places a band, but the band is more like a rubber band (not adjustable). I don't know about the reattaching of the intestines with that surgery, but I suppose it is possible. You can do a search, most obesity sites like obesityhelp.com or spotlighthealth.com give examples of the different surgeries.

Nicole,

Her surgery was probably laporoscopic (Lap) and included a silastic ring (what she is incorrectly calling her "Band.") But the name LapBand is a trademarked name referring to the only adjustable gastric bands currently approved for use in the US, which she does not have.

Some of the RnY patients also have a silastic ring (a "plastic band") used to (I think) reinforce the area where the esophagus transitions into their now smaller stomachs.

Those rings have nothing to do with adjustable gastric bands.

Sue

Edited to add this quote:

Silastic Ring Gastric Bypass: Vertical banded gastric bypass (Fobi)

The use of rings to control the stoma size, proven with Vertical Banded Gastroplasty, has led to their adoption by some surgeons as an addition to gastric bypass procedures, again to control the stoma size and prevent late stretching of the opening and, hopefully, improve the long term weight maintenance results. Both silastic rings and Marlex bands have been used. Usually the recommendation is for the ring circumference to be considerably larger than that used in primary obesity procedures, so that the limiting effect only comes into play after some degree of stretching of the pouch has occurred.

~~~~~

And:

Interestingly enough, there are bypass patients who will swear they "had to choose" RnY because they were "allergic" to the band OR who chose RnY because they couldn't tolerate the notion of a "foreign object" inside their bodies...and then ended up with the RnY with the silastic ring. (I'm mentioning this so that even "lurkers" who are in the process of researching the different types of surgery will have another question to ask their surgeon.)