Find out more about Texas lap band surgery!
Another study published in JAMA in 2007 compared the Atkins diet, the Zone diet and two other diets. After one year the average weight loss for each person was 10 pounds for the Atkins diet and 3.5 pounds for the Zone diet. For one whole year!
For people who are seriously overweight or obese, this very modest amount of weight loss is often not enough to make a big difference in their weight issues. The cost of Lap Band surgery depends mainly on the factor of whether or not your insurance company will cover the procedure for weight loss surgery.
Lap Band financing
If your insurance company does not cover weight loss surgery and you will find yourself financing it to pay for Lap Band surgery out-of-pocket. Also, many patients who have excessive insurance requirements for weight loss surgery, such as a delay of many months or even a year or longer, find that they prefer to make the investment in their own health and pay for bariatric surgery rather than suffer from the health effects of obesity.
You should know that there are potentially many advantages to financing your own weight loss surgery. The procedure’s safety is evident in the fact that nearly all patients do home the same day of the surgery. Only in rare situations would your surgeon need to make a large incision during your surgery.
Let’s review a few specific complications for gastric band surgery.
Lap Band Slippage
This is when the stomach slips up and through the band. Some surgeons report that this occurs in about 2 – 4% of their cases. If this happens there a few options. In some mild cases, simply removing fluid from the band, which loosens the restriction, may be enough for the stomach to relax and go back into position. In other cases, however a laparoscopic surgery will be required to either revise or replace the band so that the stomach is in proper position. In rare cases, if the slip has been present for a long time before the patient presents to their physician, the band may need to be removed. This is generally rare.
Lap Band Erosion
This occurs where the stomach lining gets irritated to the point that the band erodes into the stomach. No one really knows what the cause of this is. Some surgeons feel it occurs if the stomach is wrapped too tightly around the band. In other cases it is done in a hospital setting. The other issue that can occur with ports is leakage. If the port develops a leak it will need to eventually be replaced and as noted above, this might be done in either an office setting or a hospital setting. Postoperative recovery
Minimally invasive
The Lap Band gets its name from “laparoscopic surgery.” Laparoscopic surgery is a minimally invasive technique whereby small incision are made to introduce a camera into the abdomen, rather than a large cut. Several small incision are made to introduce ports through which the surgeon introduces small instruments to do the surgery with.
Regulations
Hospitals and surgery centers in the U.S. have strict regulations governing almost every aspect of your care. The nurses and physicians must be appropriately certified and licensed by state and federal organizations. You have no idea who will take care of you in Mexico and what their qualifications might be.
Legal recourse
If you suffer malpractice in Mexico you have no legal recourse. Not only that, you will not only be out the money you spent on your surgery and travel in the first place, but then you might have to pay a U.S. surgeon to fix the complication from surgery in Mexico.
You might be thinking that the diet you’re currently on can be used. So long as it is not a highly restrictive diet (such as Atkins), this would be a fair assumption. That said, the specific components of a proper lap band diet are suspiciously similar to a regular one. By that I mean that you will need to eat healthy. You cannot have this procedure and just eat high fat, high carbohydrate foods, for though you may eat less, you will do your body no favors by sticking with such a diet. Discipline here is the key. You’ll want to have salads that you enjoy, proper servings of vegetables and fruit as well as home-made meals. Why the emphasis on home-made, you ask? You can just as easily pick up something quick from the grocery store, right?
Yes, of course you can. But, when your starting out on a lap band diet, you need to be conscious of what goes into anything you may want to grab quickly at the store. Take a look the next time you go for prepared meat instead of fresh deli cuts for instance.
That said, let’s say you’ve met with the experts, got your pre-screening done and have been told that you are able to have the procedure, what is next? Well, essentially the purpose of the lap band procedure is to create a small pouch that will help limit both food intake as well as slow digestion. The idea here is that you are aided in your weight loss goals without the need for chemicals or pills that will artificially suppress your appetite.
You are simply eating less and feeling full longer, without potential and harmful side effects.Speaking personally, I’ve never been a fan of the “lose weight with a pill” idea, and this is a way to train your stomach as well as help your willpower. And, unlike pills, the treatment can be modified as you go by your doctor, with an increase or decrease of saline solution into the pouch.
That said, you might wonder exactly what will happen the day of the lap band procedure. The procedure itself is designed to last between 30 minutes to 1 hour and is done under general anesthesia. After all, with the many different diets, pills, surgeries, as well as advice, books and so forth (all of course promising lots of results quickly), you might think that it would be impossible to find what will help. However, you might not have considered lap band surgery.
At first, you might look at it and wonder if it is really safe and gets results. You may even wonder what lap band surgery is. Essentially, the procedure involves the insertion of a band laproscopically into the uppermost part of your stomach. This band can then be adjusted as the treatment goes along by your doctor. Lap band surgery, unlike other options, is quick, often only half an hour to an hour and done most often under anesthetic. It does involve a short hospital stay, but far less than other types of surgery.
Something else to consider with lap band surgery is the fact that it is completely reversible as well. Once you’ve reached your goal and have a plan in place to maintain your weight, the band itself can be taken out entirely, through small incisions. What makes lap band surgery popular is the fact that, unlike, pills or other weight loss programs which may be very restrictive in terms of diet, you can still eat foods you enjoy. Your doctor should explain that though this treatment is effective, it is not a panacea, meaning you can’t just have the procedure done and then proceed to eat Big Macs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You will need to adjust your eating and exercise habits to get the most out of the procedure.
That said, you can probably see where this is headed: the lap band in and of itself will not be the sole thing that causes you to lose weight. And should you disregard your doctor’s advise on diet and lifestyle, you may very well have a lap band surgery failure. These foods are the ones that are the easiest to gain weight from and will do you no favors. Something else you’ll want to do to mitigate lap band surgery failure is to increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables. And by fresh, it is meant that you go to your local farmer’s market, not the supermarket.
Finally, a key thing you’ll want to remember when thinking about the possibility of lap band surgery failure is that you’ll need to avoid sugary foods like candy as well as carbonated drinks (beer included), as they are of no nutritional value and actually destroy things your body needs, such as vitamins.
Carbonated drinks are another to be avoided. You might be wondering why this is? The reason for this is that these types of foods add no nutrition to your body and work against it.
Why am I harping so much on proper diet? Simple, lap band treatments essentially create a pouch that can be inflated or deflated, allowing more or less food to be taken in and digested. In short it won’t matter how your doctor adjusts the belt if you’re diet consists of high fat, high calorie foods.
So, is a lapband effective? It is as long as you commit to healthy choices.
Once you’ve done this you then need to start doing research or “due diligence” to ensure that this procedure is one that is right for you and one you feel comfortable with going forward. Something else to consider of course is that you can’t just wake up one morning and decide that this is what you will get done. You will have to have tests done and speak with specialists to ensure that you are a candidate for the procedure in the first place.
That being said, once you’ve done your research, committed to healthy lifestyle choices and had have been successfully pre-screened, there are still ways that you can get affordable lap band surgery. One of the best ways to do this is ensuring that you know and understand all the costs, from beginning to end, for it is more than just the procedure itself that will need to be paid for. For instance. the procedure, though quick will require an overnight stay at the hospital afterwards, mostly to ensure that it took and for you to shake off the anesthetic. This will need to paid for. Another thing to think about is that the doctor, and anesthesiologist will need to be paid as well. Finally, of course, there is the cost of the actual procedure and the device itself. That said, if you do consider going this route, you will need to factor in travel time, as well as obtaining proper documentation (such as a passport) if you don’t already have it.
However, if the thought of traveling the out of the continental United States in order to have the surgery done is unappealing to you then one other thing that you can do is consider the fact that many clinics have financing options available for you. Consider, however that the cost for lap band surgery may seem high, the benefits of having it done far outweigh its negatives. Another option of course is lap band surgery. However, if you’ve done your research, then you undoubtedly know the costs involved. Whic leads to the question: does insurance cover lap band surgery?
The answer of course is: it depends. Some will cover the full amount, some companies will only cover partial costs and some exclude types of weight loss surgery altogether. the key of course is finding out which ones cover the surgery. To that end, here’s a partial list:
Blue Cross
United Healthcare
Oxford Health Plan
Medicaid
American Family Insurance
Remember that you will have to research to find more than are listed here
That being said, some companies will of course require documentation that this surgery is in fact the best option for your particular circumstance. In this case, the documentation they seek is a letter stating the medical necessity of having this surgery, which can be provided by your doctor. Funny how, even when we’re grown up, we still seem to need doctor’s notes. That said, the company will look for specific information, such as the length of time you’ve been struggling with your condition. Side effects of your condition and of course, how long you’ve tried to beat it and what methods you’ve used. In short, they are looking for a relatively detailed medical history centering around your weight loss issues.