Gastric Balloon, You Need to Know About it
What is the Gastric Balloon
The gastric balloon is an inflatable balloon that doctors feed through the throat down into the stomach. “It’s job is basically to take up space in the stomach and to make it so people feel full more quickly and have less drive to eat between meals,”.
Who can use Gastric Balloon
There’s a couple scenarios in which this might work. One is in somebody who wants to lose a moderate amount of weight in a specific amount of time — the classic example would be for a wedding. “Another situation would be with somebody who is morbidly obese and trying to have another surgery,”.
“In orthopedics, for example, doctors sometimes don’t want to repair a knee or hip if somebody is also morbidly obese, because they won’t be able to rehabilitate their new joint properly or they’ll be likely to have some kind of secondary injury or problem.” The balloon is a good tool to get someone who’s too heavy for that kind of surgery to a safer weight.
Special considerations: “The balloon is designed to be used for six months at a time, so it’s not meant to be a long-term weight loss solution, it’s more of a short-term weight-loss solution,”.
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