Sugery on Hold

I just learned my insurance company has denied coverage so I am appealing. Doesn't look like this is happening next Wednesday. Will update as soon as I know something. Have a great weekend of health and happiness, everyone. Love, Reenie

Hang in there Reenie, my money is on you winning this appeal. Love, Connie

Reenie, I've been looking into this enlarged stoma issue and found the following: 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. Listing of complications following silastic ring gastric bypass. As for gastric bypass plus band erosion. Statistically significant long-term data have been noticeably scarce in the evaluation of various bariatric procedures. Bariatric patients who lose weight frequently experience drastic life-style changes and often exhibit denial to the extent that follow-up is impaired. In this study, a cohort of 100 consecutive patients who underwent silicone elastomere ring vertical gastroplasty is evaluated at 46-55 months post-surgery with 90% follow-up. Results indicate that the 24-month figure of 36% loss of the preoperative weight level deteriorates to 32% at 46-55 months, and the failure rate increases slightly to 25% (or less), primarily due to anatomic failure of the procedure. Failure due to lack of patient compliance occurs but is less common than previously thought. Silicone elastomere ring vertical gastroplasty remains one of the safest of the effective procedures available to the bariatric surgeon. The most common late complications of gastric-reduction operations resulting in weight regain were staple line disruption and pouch or stoma enlargement.