sclerotherapy anyone???

Hi all! Long time no chat! Here's my question: has anyone heard of or had sclerotherapy? Not the sclerotherapy for vericose veins though. The sclerotherapy that I'm looking at is to reduce the size of my stoma opening. I think that from day one my stoma has been larger, and I have always been able to eat way too much. At 2 wks out I could eat more than my husband and he was two years out. I stopped eating out of fear, not fullness, and graduated in food quantity quickly. Now, I am fortunate that I lost ~ 80 pounds, but I could stand to lose another 40 off my caboose. It doesn't help that I can eat far too much, either, and I still consider myself an over-eater and addicted to food. From what I understand, sclerotherapy is just a basic "scope", but an irritant is put on the stoma area to shrink it to it's original post surgery size, thus reducing food intake and hopefully retraining my brain and stomach to work together in a healthy way. So help me out, team. Anyone hear about this? Thanks Diana

Hi Diana, I don't know anyone that's had it done. Because I have a vertical banded gastroplasty - roux Y gastric bypass, which places a flexible, non-stretchable mesh band around the pouch near the outlet, the surgery never has stoma failure. The band keeps the size of the stoma a fixed size for life. In asking my surgeon (now employer) he said he'd spoken with a gastroenterologist about this. The gastro doc said it's not a good procedure because it is difficult to be precise with the amount of "hardening" of the tissues. A little too much and you can have big problems. While it sounds like a very attractive solution, be very careful with this one. I understand that more often they're putting Lap-Bands on pouches where there is room to accomodate a band. Have you talked with your surgeon about this? Irene

I am waiting to hear back from my surgeon re: sclerotherapy. I'm trying to avoid a revision/surgery, and weight loss surgery is an exclusion with my insurance, so I need to investigate less expensive alternatives. It does worry me that they are literally damaging the tissue to create a smaller stoma. There are risks with everything, too, it's just a matter of determining if the risk is worth it or not. I'll keep y'all posted on what I do decide to do. I'm fortunate that I haven't gained much back (I am 10 pounds above my lowest weight, but I'm petrified of that number creeping higher--I want to squash that bug NOW before it becomes a bigger bug than I can handle....and I certainly don't want to buy new pants, either!). I'm just concerned because the potential is there. Thanks for your thoughts and info. Diana