Dr. Gagner recently published a very important paper in the journal Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases titled "Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy as a revisional procedure for failed gastric banding: lessons from 300 consecutive cases" that compared weight loss rate and complication rate of normal sleeve gastrectomy patients to those converting from the adjustable gastric band to the sleeve gastrectomy. Interestingly, the conversion resulted in less postoperative complications than the sleeve at 2% vs 4.5%. This means that the rate of leakages in the conversion was actually less than in the normal sleeve procedure. In addition the conversion resulted in comparative weight loss with results averaging at 63% of excess weight loss in the conversion vs. 76% of excess weight loss in the normal sleeve gastrectomy.

There are all good indications that a conversion to sleeve gastrectomy after a failed gastric banding is a good option, with low complication rates and relatively good excess weight loss results. No wonder that this revision is the most popular one at our clinic!

You can find the epub version of the article here.