LAPBANDERS: The FDA wants to hear from YOU!!

Things are not so black and white with the band.  You can read all you want and make all of the assumptions you want, but the band is totally unpredictable no matter what the Pt. or the Dr. does or does not do.

Until you have a band, you will never know how it is going to react to your anatomy.  It is totally contrary to how the digestive system is supposed to work.  Nature will win out eventually.

You write as if you are an employee of Allergen trying to diffuse the known problems that are very very real.  Just ask the thousands of former band pts. who survived the daily torture of living with a band.

You may be able to fool yourself and others who do not have a band YET, but the people *****ally know will continue to educate on the dangers and futility of the band.

Thanks for your feedback, no I am not an employee of Allergen, I am a non-bias person seeking a solution to my obesity. I am seeking a surgery that is effective and do not have long term adverse side effects. I am looking from the outside and seeking a surgery that will get me where I need to be without too much risk to my quality of life.

When observing how patients live with a particular surgery I ignore all the bitterness or cheer-leading, I look at facts, and then weigh my options. Any surgery will be effective, my main concern is living with a surgery that will not disrupt my work-life and quality of life long term.

Again, I am still on the fence with the Sleeve and the Band. If someone tells me not to get a lap band because they suffered a bad experience would the same thing as someone telling me not to get a Camry because their brakes went bad. Another analogy is -- if someone says get a Sleeve because they just love it would be irresponsible for me not to dig deeper and look and see how Sleevers really live day to day, I would be foolish to choose a more permanent surgery without knowing how that person lives daily.

As much as I'm tempted to turn this thread into a "surgery war," I'm not going to.  What I AM going to do is remind you that (1) if controlling your diet and being perfectly compliant didn't work for you pre-op, you are almost CERTAINLY fooling yourself to think that you are going to be able to change your personality and to ignore the physiological drives and cravings which will not change with a piece of plastic around your stomach; (2) a device that is that easy to screw up the function of, either by surgeon or patient error, is a crapshoot to start with - and you are being told that the patient can be PERFECTLY compliant and have thing go wrong; and (3) you just need to keep reading anecdotes and statistics and recognize that they are against you.

www.obesityhelp.com/forums/amos/4428353/What-does-Less-Invas ive-REALLY-mean/

www.obesityhelp.com/forums/amos/4304076/PLEASE-RESPOND-Explain-your-Lap-Band-AGB-Experience/

www.obesityhelp.com/forums/amos/4376706/If-your-band-FAILED-you-please-check-in-here/

www.obesityhelp.com/forums/amos/4386446/Allergan-amp-Realize-bands-recall-information/

www.obesityhelp.com/forums/amos/4387717/benefit-of-lap-band-surgery-on-16year-old/

www.obesityhelp.com/forums/LapBand/4398937/New-here-Researching-and-Learning/

www.obesityhelp.com/forums/lapband/4399622/Newbie-from-Chicago/#36376935

www.obesityhelp.com/forums/lapband/4421031/I-hate-my-band/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2698858/?tool=pu bmed
"The placement of a gastric band appears to be a disservice to many morbidly obese patients and therefore, in the current culture of evidence based medicine, the prevalent use of laparoscopic gastric banding can no longer be justified."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21422330
"However, because nearly 1 out of 3 patients experienced band erosion, and nearly 50% of the patients required removal of their bands (contributing to a reoperation rate of 60%), LAGB appears to result in relatively poor long-term outcomes."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21188545
"LAGB can achieve an acceptable weight loss in some patients, but the failure in one out of four patients does not allow proposing it as a first-line option for the treatment of obesity."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20496124
"Of the study population, 146 (52.9%) patients had at least one complication requiring reoperation. Presently, only 148 (53.6%) patients still have their original band, 49 (17.8%) had their original band replaced with a new one, and 79 (28.6%) had their band removed."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19730234
"The percent of excess weight loss at 4 years was higher in the gastric bypass group (68 ± 19% vs. 45 ± 28%, respectively, P < 0.05)."

Regarding this study - I find this VERY disturbing: "Between 2002 and 2007, 250 patients with a body mass index of 35 to 60 kg/m2 were randomly assigned to gastric bypass or gastric banding."  Randomly assigned a surgery type???  Holy fuck!!  Who would participate in such a trial??

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18795380
7 year study on lapbands, with SOME patients converted to RNY:
"Patients converted to gastric bypass, and those retaining gastric bands throughout the study had very similar outcomes."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18656830
This is interesting in that the LapBand patients long-term assorted into two types when you plot weight:
"It has been our perception that the weight loss results after gastric bypass are relatively normally and tightly distributed around the mean, making it relatively predictable. However, we have found that the results after adjustable gastric banding are more highly variable. In fact, there appears to be 2 groups of patients after this restrictive operation. One group, that is able to work well and does not struggle much against the restriction, accepts the limits that it imposes, and another group, that does not easily learn to deal with the restriction and hence mal-adapts."


I suspect the dumping syndrome symptoms that are showing up in VSGers relate to their sleeves being made too small in what is likely a vain attempt to prevent long-term stretching.  Those too-small sleeves sound horrible to me - strictures, vomiting and now dumping too (I'm guessing the too-small stomach tries to get the stuff out of there as soon as possible, resulting in the same issue of undigested food hitting the jejunum too soon - DS stomachs aren't made that small and almost NONE of us have this problem - which, by the way, can happen in normies too with overingestion of sugar).  And I don't believe they are going to remain small enough, long term, to prevent overeating and regain in the absence of a metabolic change like that provided by the switch.

But I STILL think the VSG is better than the band.

 No one addressed your comments on sleevers dumping, since we still have an intact pyloric valve our chances of dumping are about the same as those who have never had surgery. 

Just wanted to correct that little bit of misinformation for anyone who might be reading and researching. 

Diana,

FYI, public comment periods are normally announced by federal agencies in the Federal Register.  You can do a search on line.

cat

I have to thank Diana for this, while it may not apply to many bandsters there does seem to be some specific issues that are recurring with failed bandsters that aren't specifically addressed in the risks that are printd so far. Those of you with no problems should just ignore the post but for the few of us who have had issues this may not only be helpful but maybe could get us revised maybe even at no cost to those of us who don't have insurance coverage. So as I always say to those of you who are succesful awesome for you but we who have problems can benefit from this information. So thanks Diana.

Whether one is happy with their band or not, more oversight is a benefit to all.  Makers of all devices need to be held accountable for the products they sell.  If they are causing damage and not living up to the claims they make, it is only fair that this is brought to light and monitored by the agency who gave them permission to market these devices in the first place.

BUMPING...

Just in case anyone needs to see this.

It's a good idea to have this information, regardless of your situation right now.

Allergan called me about a week ago to question me about my band issues which I had reported to the FDA. Apparently both surgeons *****moved my bands neglected to send them back to Allergan for
" analysis " I'm thinking there long gone in a medical waste facility by now.