Duodenal Switch Surgery

Weight loss surgery is becoming a most common way in order to get rid of excess weight and the problem of extreme obesity. At present, there are different types of weight loss options that help to lose weight. One of them is duodenal switch surgery. Duodenal switch surgery is a weight loss surgery in which surgeon removes the large portion of the stomach and reroutes the intestine. This procedure reduces the amount of calorie absorption by the food intake. The surgery provides rapid weight loss but in addition there are some duodenal switch side effects.

Duodenal switch is a weight loss process that involves both restrictive and malabsorptive procedure for promoting weight loss. In a restrictive procedure, the 75 to 80% of the stomach is removed towards the greater curvature for restricting the amount of food intake. After that malabsorptive procedure is done by rerouting the small intestine through which nutrients from the food can be absorbed. The duodenal switch leaves small portion of pyloric valve via which contents from the stomach passed to the small intestine. After surgery patients may have duodenal switch side effects either short term or long term side effects.

After surgery, patients may experience problems like bleeding, clotting of blood or loss of hemoglobin. Sometimes, there may be little swelling in the stomach or intestine occurs. There may be a chance of leakage from the stitches done on stomach. Apart from this, there is a huge risk of deficiency of nutrients like vitamins, proteins, calcium and iron. Due to deficiency of these nutrients, many health problems like osteoporosis can occur. Due to deficiency of vitamin A, patients may have night blindness. Other side effects of duodenal switch may be chronic diarrhea, gastric problems, foul odor, flatulence etc.

In order to combat the side effects of duodenal switch surgery, doctors always recommend to take some nutritional supplement to balance the deficiency. Also, they advised some post-operative diets to get long-term weight loss results. Some sort of risks and side effects are associated with all kinds of surgery. It just required to follow some precautions.

Keeping aside the side effects of duodenal switch, the main advantage that patients get from duodenal switch surgery is about 60-80% of excess weight loss in comparison to 40-60% weight loss in Lap band surgery and 50-75% weight loss in Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery.