You must be a non-smoker. Smoking disqualifies patients from surgery, because it not only interferes with wound healing and causes respiratory complications, but counteracts all the medical benefits of weight loss. You must have a sincere motivation to lose weight, including a willingness to make necessary changes in habits, to cooperate fully with instructions, and to keep appointments for follow-up visits. You must be between 15 and 60 years of age, though this requirement may vary in individual cases. Vertical banded gastroplasty creates a small upper pouch in the stomach and then uses a vertical band of synthetic material to restrict the opening between this upper pouch and the lower stomach.
Food then leaves the stomach in the normal fashion after passing out of the upper pouch.
To allow drainage from the stomach, this small pouch is connected to the small intestine, a portion of which is bypassed. Both of these operations do require that patients change their eating habits. Because of the small size of the stomach pouches which are created surgically, large meals cannot be tolerated. Eating too much may result in regurgitation or vomiting. In this fashion, behavior modification is enforced upon the patient.