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Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Laparoscopic Gastric Banding

Dr. Pitamaha always says that there is too much aggression in the field of surgery today. Unfortunately, its always Dr. Broadwalk who proves him right!

Dr. Broadwalk has been transferred to another hospital but something in him made him want to do his first Lap. Gastric Banding (Surgery for morbid obesity where the stomach is banded to make you thin) at our hospital itself. So, he takes permission from the M.S., arranges and ICU bed, calls two surgeons from outside along with their private anaesthetists and sends us a 140 kg 5 ft 1" 40 something lady to be admitted in the ICU as a gift. Each of her legs were like two of mine combined and lets not even get started on the abdomen.

She was taken in the OT at 2 pm and the procedure started with the inroduction of the scope. Immediately, there were obvious problems.... They failed to take into account the weight of her liver which seemed to be large enough to cover everything else in the abdomen. As a result they were unable to get a correct plane to apply the gastric band and ended up struggling. When I say struggling I mean Dr. Boss Man, Dr. Lefty and Dr. Chopper (Head of dept of surgery) all came, saw, waited, saw some more, and left at varying intervals. Oh I might mention at this point that we are some 5 hours into the operation by now and all they've managed to do is tear a bit of the liver and make a small gap in the plane behind the stomach.

Now I don't mean to be cynical but Mom told me that they shouldn't try such a surgery in a setup as great as the B.M.C. and warned me of the problems that may arise. Sometimes the ego of a surgeon is all that matters and the two pvt docs were hell bent on proving everyone wrong. They failed!

The case was converted to an open surgery, took some 6 & 1/2 hours to do (routine 2 hrs) and was more traumatic for that 140 kg lady than walking with those two feet would ever be.

If I wasn't bound to protect identity I would have posted the photo of the lady but let me see if I can find one with just her legs...Just being a HUGE understatement, of course.
140 kgs....wow

Oh another thing (sorry shanky) but the bariatric surgeon mentioned to Dr. Shanky that if he doesn't control his eating he would be next on the list!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

dr. shanky seems to be huge

Anonymous said...

Is Dr. Shanky the first pregnant male??

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