Gastric Bypass 're-dos' With No Incision

U.S. firm EndoGastric Solutions said Monday its device StomaphyX has been used successfully in five transoral, "redo" obesity procedures.

Obesity re-do procedures are for patients who, after having gastric bypass surgery, have regained their weight.

The company said that in each procedure the patient's stomach pouch was reduced to 50 percent its original size in a 20-minute, post-gastric bypass process that required no incision.

All five patients experienced the onset of satiety and a significant change in their eating habits, said their stomachs felt similar to the four- to five-week period after the original surgery, and began to lose excess weight, the company added.

The procedures were done in December at Sint-Blasius Hospital in Dendermonde, Belgium.

"For the first time, we have been able to achieve similar near-term results as we would hope to achieve with a laparoscopic gastric redo-procedure but through a fully trans-oral procedure," said Jacques Himpens, a physician who has performed more than 600 gastric redo-procedures and more than 6,000 bariatric procedures.

"This breakthrough procedure is important for the future of both bariatric surgery and gastroenterology since we are dealing with an extremely fragile patient population who often cannot undergo a second or third surgical procedure," said Michel Cremer, another physician who performs the surgeries. "When these patients return for a follow up visit and have regained their weight, they are devastated from a psychological standpoint and, until now, they were faced with the prospect of yet another serious surgery or the risk of becoming morbidly obese again."

Standard bariatric revision surgery is time-consuming and has a high complication rate, experts say.