Dr. Tejal Kanwar

Bariatric surgery refers to a host of surgical procedures that help a person suffering from obesity to lose weight. Various methods are used to achieve the desired results, often times using the help of a gastric band to decrease the size of the stomach or surgically removing a small portion of the stomach.

Notwithstanding the result, bariatric surgery like any other surgery, involves certain risks. Some of them are:

1. Uncontrolled bleeding: One of the most common risks that any surgery entails is that of excessive or uncontrolled bleeding. If this condition persists, they often times lead to death.
2. Infection: Though infections seemingly appear easily preventable and easy to deal with, they often snowball into fatalistic danger to the point of no recovery.
3. Side-effects of anesthesia: Administering a general anesthesia before performing any surgery is a common practice. However sometimes it may yield certain unforeseen consequences.
4. Clotting of blood: Quite similar to excessive bleeding, even clotting of blood presents an equally if not more hazardous situation. Though sometimes timely intervention of medications resolves the situation, often it aggravates into a grievous cause of concern.
5. Hypoglycemia; Hypoglycemia refers to the condition when there is a deficiency or the lack of glucose in the blood. Though this is a side-effect of bariatric surgery, it does not appear immediately but rather surfaces many years after the operation was performed.
6. Emotional disorder: Along with physical ailments, post bariatric surgery may also affect you emotionally. Post-bariatric surgery may sometimes lead to emotional and behavioral disorders in you and sudden, incomprehensible mood swings.
7. Death: Though rare, one cannot negate the possibility of death as a plausible risk of bariatric surgery.