Bands, used for more than a decade in Europe, are just catching on in the United States; balloons are not in the pipeline for approval from the Food and Drug Administration yet.
“There are really profound differences in how we think about weight-loss surgery,” said Dr. Sayeed Ikramuddin, a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the chief of bariatric surgery at the University of Minnesota.
Eighty percent of weight-loss surgery in the United States involves a far more arduous and technically demanding bypass operation in which the stomach is cut and made smaller with staples, then reconnected far down in the intestine.
While the initial weight loss is often more rapid, complications are more common and many patients are loath to undergo the larger procedure.” (New York Times )
