You can find answers to frequently asked questions about the gastric sleeve surgery such as What is the Purpose of Gastric Sleeve Surgery?, What is the Success Criteria in Gastric Sleeve Surgery?, How Does the Procedure Develop after Gastric Sleeve Surgery?, How Often Should the Checks Be Done after the Gastric Sleeve Surgery?, Does Leakage Occur in Gastric Sleeve?.
Gastric sleeve surgery is one of the most frequently performed surgeries of the obesity surgery. In this surgical procedure, which is also known as stomach reduction surgery, eighty percent of the stomach is cut and removed laparoscopically, that is, by closed surgery, and the stomach volume is narrowed.

What is the Purpose of Gastric Sleeve Surgery
The purpose of gastric sleeve surgery is to reduce the amount of food consumed by the patient and accordingly the amount of calories consumed daily by narrowing the volume of the stomach.
A second reason for weight loss is the reduction of the hormone called ghrelin, which is secreted from the entire stomach and increases appetite, resulting in loss of appetite.
Video Expression

What is the Success Criteria in Gastric Sleeve Surgery?
As a result, it is aimed for the patient to lose weight by reducing both food intake and appetite with this surgery. Losing at least 70 percent of the patient’s excess weight within 1 year after gastric sleeve surgery is considered a success criterion.
In summary, Gastric Sleeve Surgery
- Is the most frequently performed surgery of the obesity surgery.
- Is also known as stomach reduction surgery.
80% of the stomach is removed with the closed method. - The amount of food and calories a person takes is reduced by reducing the volume of the stomach.
- The secretion of the ghrelin hormone, which causes an increase in appetite, is reduced, thereby reducing the appetite with the shrinking volume of the stomach.
- The surgery takes an average of 1 hour.
- It requires at least 2 days of hospitalization.
- The next day of the surgery, the leakage is checked with a film and the risk of leakage is minimized. If there is no leakage in the film, it is not likely to happen again.
- In order to prevent leakage in the stomach, the stomach is not narrowed more than necessary and the part with the staples is supported with stitches.
- The patients are called for control at the end of the 1st month, 3rd month, 6th month and 12th month. The purpose of these controls is to look for deficiencies in certain vitamins and blood values. If any deficiencies are detected, complementary treatments are started.
- The success criterion in the surgery is to lose 70% of the excess weight at the end of 1 year.
How the Procedure Proceeds After Gastric Sleeve Surgery?
After the surgery, the patient is required to stay in the hospital for two nights. One day after the surgery, a film is taken to check whether there is any leakage from the stomach, whether the stomach volume has reached the desired size, and how the fluid passage is. If there is no problem in these matters as a result of the film, the patient is easily discharged on the next day, that is, on the second day of the surgery.
If it is determined that there is no leakage in this film, which was taken one day after the surgery, this means that there will be no leakage later.
How Often Should Gastric Sleeve Surgery Checks Be Performed?
After the surgery, the patients are called for control in the first, third, sixth and twelfth months. The purpose of these controls is to follow certain vitamin and blood values of the patient during these periods. Although there are not many problems in this regard in the gastric sleeve surgeries, if there is any deficiency in the patient’s vitamin and blood values during these follow-ups, supplementary treatments are performed to compensate for these deficiencies.
Is There a Leakage in Gastric Sleeve Surgery?
The most curious subject of patients in the gastric sleeve surgery is whether there will be a post-operative leak or how to prevent a leakage.
In this surgery, the most important point to prevent leakage is not to narrow the stomach more than necessary. Another important point is to strengthen the remaining part of the stomach where the staples are with stitches. Support of the stitches to support the staples significantly reduces the risk of leakage.
Frequently Asked Questions
You can find answers to your questions below …
Before the surgery, it is not possible to say 100% whether a patient will have a prolapse problem after losing weight. However, the possibility of prolapse after the surgery is high in the people who have too much weight to lose according to their ideal weight.
After the surgery, especially starting from the 3rd month, there is a hair loss problem that lasts for 2-3 months on average. This is especially true in the patients having iron, biotin, zinc and selenium deficiencies. Therefore, it is important to use vitamins especially in the first 3 months after the surgery. Vitamins found to be deficient in controls should be supplemented. Hair loss is not permanent. Weakened hair strands break and there is no problem in the hair root.
If the patient does not have weight-related resistant diabetes, if there is no gastric hernia and severe reflux in the endoscopy, gastric sleeve surgery is recommended.
Bypass should be preferred more in patients with obesity disease due to excessive sugar consumption. Bypass is more preferred as revision surgery in the people who have had gastric sleeve surgery and gain weight again.
In order to check whether there is a leak or not, a blue dyed liquid is given during the surgery and a control film is taken one day after the surgery. If no leakage is detected in this test and film, then leakage will not occur.
Not making the stomach smaller than necessary during the surgery reduces the risk of leakage, and additionally suturing the stomach part that is cut during the surgery reduces the risk of leakage.
After you are discharged from the hospital, it takes an average of 1 week for you to get used to the new procedure after the surgery, for your stitches to go away and for your body to be completely discharged from anesthesia. Therefore, all our patients can return to work 1 week after the surgery, unless there is an unusual situation.
The probability of using vitamins for life after both gastric sleeve and bypass surgery is very, very low. If there is no vitamin deficiency after the 3rd month in the controls, the vitamin support given as a supplement is discontinued.
You can start walking about 1 week after the surgery. After 1 month, you can swim and ride a bike. You can start heavy sports after 2-3 months.
You will lose weight quickly in the first 3-4 months of the surgery, but your weight loss can pause in between. This period lasts about 2-3 weeks, and in some patients up to 6 weeks. You should not worry and panic during this period, as this is a situation we have been waiting for. If you do not disrupt your diet after the surgery, you will continue to lose weight.
You will have pain for the first 3 hours after the surgery. This pain will be minimized with strong painkillers. You can have nausea and vomiting on the day of surgery. You can bleed from your mouth during vomiting. This is what we expect. On the 2nd day, you will only feel occasional pain at the surgery site. Nausea and vomiting can rarely occur. On the 3rd day, you will return home very comfortably. In some patients, nausea can subside and continue up to the 1st week.
Drinking coffee after the surgery does not harm the stitches in your stomach, drinking coffee can increase gastric reflux and increase fluid loss from the body, so we do not recommend coffee consumption for 2 months after the surgery.
We do not recommend that our patients become pregnant for the first 12 months after surgery, for their own and their children’s health. We recommend the surgery to the people who plan to have surgery after pregnancy, when they finish the breastfeeding period, otherwise we do not perform obesity surgeries during breastfeeding.
You should come to the hospital at least 1 day before the surgery and have your endoscopy and other analyzes done. After the anesthesiologist and other units deemed necessary evaluate you, the surgery is performed when approval is given. On the 2nd day of the surgery, a control film is taken and liquid foods are started to the patient. On the 3rd day, the hospital is discharged. So you stay in the hospital for 2 nights.