Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
close window
Housecall Archives
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
close window
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Risks
By Mayo Clinic staffAs with any major surgery, gastric bypass has risks such as bleeding, infection and reactions to the anesthesia. Possible complications of gastric bypass surgery include:
- Vitamin and mineral deficiency
- Dehydration
- Gallstones
- Bleeding stomach ulcer
- Hernia at the incision site
- Intolerance to certain foods
- Kidney stones
- Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia)
Possible rare, but serious risks specific to Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery include:
- Death. The risk varies depending on age, general health and other medical conditions. Talk to your doctor about the level of risk gastric bypass surgery may pose for you.
- Blood clots in the legs. Blood clots in the legs are more likely to occur in very overweight people. Blood clots can be dangerous. In some cases, they travel to the lungs and lodge in the lungs' arteries as a pulmonary embolism — a serious condition that damages lung tissue and can lead to death. Walking and using leg wraps that apply pressure can help reduce this risk of blood clots in the legs.
- Leaking at one of the staple lines in the stomach. This severe complication can be treated with antibiotics. Most cases heal with time. Sometimes, the leak can be serious enough to require emergency surgery.
- Pneumonia. Excess weight places extra stress on the chest cavity and lungs, creating an increased risk of developing pneumonia after the surgery.
- Narrowing of the opening between the stomach and small intestine. This rare complication may require either an outpatient procedure to pass a tube through your mouth to widen (dilate) the narrowed opening or corrective surgery that could require a brief hospital stay.
- Dumping syndrome. Gastric bypass can also cause dumping syndrome, a condition where stomach contents move too quickly through the small intestine causing nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness and sweating.
References
- American Gastroenterological Association. American Gastroenterological Association medical position statement on obesity. Gastroenterology. 2002;123:879.
- Bariatric surgery for severe obesity. National Institute on Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/PDFs/gasurg12.04bw.pdf. Accessed Aug. 10, 2009.
- Mun EC, et al. Surgical management of severe obesity. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Aug. 10, 2009.
- Angrisiani L, et al. Laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding versus Roux-en-Y gastric bypass: 5-year results of a prospective randomized trial. Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases. 2007;3:127.
- Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery (LABS) Consortium. Perioperative safety in the longitudinal assessment of bariatric surgery. New England Journal of Medicine. 2009;361:445.
- Suter M, et al. Results of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass in morbidly obese vs superobese patients: Similar body weight loss, correction of comorbidities, and improvement of quality of life. Archives of Surgery. 2009;144:312.
- Cottam D, et al. Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy as an initial weight-loss procedure for high-risk patients with morbid obesity. Surgical Endoscopy. 2006;20:859.
- Mun EC, et al. Complications of bariatric surgery. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Aug. 10, 2009.
