All's well Xpost

Had my routine annual barium swallow this morning, supposed to be 5 year one but a few months late.

All is just as it should be. Radiologist said everything fine.

I asked about bands in general and was told that they find a very good success rate with relatively few removals. Meaningless really as no figures or time spans given. But this is the major NHS hospital trust for the Thames Valley region, serving a city and many large towns. No axes to grind as this is the nationalised non- profit making service and they do all 4 of the main wls. And this was the radiologist talking who is a fully qualified doctor and who does most of the fluoroscopy band checks. I was told they have many vets of 5 years plus like me.

So if they are happy with banding as an option, that's very positive! We have some vehement anti-band feeling on other boards but it is really weird, Brits seem to do better than Americans with them!

Kate
 

Glad everything is good.  Only problem is my surgery is better than yours!!  LOL

Good job this is a Brit board and share the same sense of humour. Crack a joke like that on the main board and you would start a war!

(Snerk!!)

I've never seen the reasoning behind those silly surgery wars.

Could the success rate in UK bands vs success rates in US bands simply be a mechanical
problem, such as how the installation is done?  As well as the expectations of the different
populations?? 

I guess we'll never know if there are no studies done.

So glad to read of your success.

Lynn, I have a theory! Possibly rubbish but possibly not!

To get any wls in the UK is hard. You probably, almost certainly have to pay yourself. A few get it done by the nationalised health service but that is not common. There is also less acceptance over here of elective surgery. Now you and I know that to classify wls as elective or cosmetic is b***** it. But that is the perception of many. And finally, our docs do far less wls.

The result, possibly, of all that is that we are more determined to succeed, more likely to have done research and our docs are not treating the surgeries as conveyor belt ops.

It seems to me that those things may combine to improve compliance, expectations, after care etc. etc.. So things may and do still go "wrong". But perhaps our odds are slightly better?

Well, it's a theory!!

Kate

Sounds perfectly plausible to me, especially the part where the surgery isn't "conveyor belt"