The pouch is made smaller by passing a device through the mouth and into the pouch. StomaphyX and ROSE procedures both retighten the stomach by inserting tubes down the esophagus and into the stomach pouch. Permanent folds are then made around the stoma and within the pouch.

An adjustable gastric band, commonly known as LAP-BAND or Realize Band, can be inserted around the top part of the stomach and sewn into place over the pouch that was created during the original gastric bypass surgery.

Convert to a distal Roux-en-Y gastric bypass from a proximal Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. The difference in the surgeries is the amount of intestine bypassed. Proximal Roux-en Y gastric bypass surgery is where ten to twenty percent or 18-40 inches of the intestine is bypassed; while distal Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery is a bypass of greater than fifty percent or more than 120 inches of intestine.

Covert to a duodenal switch, a type of bariatric revision surgery that restores some of the stomach pouch and then divides the stomach vertically, similar to a gastric sleeve, while removing more than eighty-five percent of the stomach. Since a large part of the stomach is removed, this part of the procedure is irreversible. Additionally, a large part of the intestines are rerouted and bypassed so that calories are only absorbed through 75-100 cm of intestine. Duodenal Switch is also referred to as vertical gastrectomy with duodenal switch, biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch, gastric reduction duodenal switch, DS, BPD-DS, or GR-DS.

My doctor and I decided that the StomaphyX procedure would be the best bariatric revision option for me. The operation was successfully performed, and the twenty pounds I had regained was lost plus ten more. My personal satisfaction is mixed.

Initially, I felt great, the best since I was a teenager. Then, about nine months after the procedure I began to feel exhausted. My program of exercise suffered, and I gained back the ten additional pounds that had been lost. Overall, I remain in the break even position of twenty pounds lost.

It has been almost four years since the StomaphyX revision surgery and, at this point, I am more pleased than not. I remind myself that all that statistics show that gastric bypass patients regain an average of twenty to twenty-five percent of the weight they lose within ten years of the gastric bypass surgery. The lesson of this is that the program of maintenance, which is developed after the bariatric surgery (this is true no matter which weight loss surgery you have), should be adhered to at all times. A program of diet and exercise is only as effective as the effort.  

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