Bariatric Surgery

Surgical Options

There are two ways bariatric surgery works to help you lose weight.

1. Restrictive procedures reduce the amount of food you can eat by making the stomach pouch smaller. You feel full with less food, which helps you eat less.
2. Malabsorptive procedures change the way your body absorbs food by shortening the route food takes through the intenstines. The surgeon reroutes the small instestine so that food skips a section that would normally absorb more calories and nutrients from the food. Most of these procedures also restrict food intake.

In addition, combination procedures, such as the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery, combine restrictive and malabsorptive methods. During this procedure, the surgeon creates a small pouch and then attaches a Y-shaped section of the small intestine directly to this smaller stomach pouch. While the smaller stomach pouch causes patients to feel fuller sooner and eat less food, the shorter route through the intestine results in fewer calories absorbed.

At UMDNJ-SOM Bariatric Surgery we use minimally invasive surgery to offer two types of restrictive procedures - Gastric Banding and Sleeve Gastrectomy - as well as the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass.