WLS: What If You Change Your Mind?
Is The Gastric Bypass Reversible?

By Sue Widemark

Sometimes people change their minds. Many go into Weight Loss Surgery (WLS) unsure of whether it is for them and thus, they ask "Is the gastric bypass reversible if I don't like it?" Often they receive a reassuring "YES" even from their surgeon but is this really true?

If we think about the idea of reversal (going back to the same way it was before surgery), it doesn't make sense. In a gastric bypass, the stomach is cut into two pieces, one small 1 oz pouch and a 39 oz bypassed part. Three rows of staples secure the two pieces so that most of the time they don't leak. So if you wish to reverse this surgery, how would you take the staples out and reconnect the two pieces? Answer: you don't.

There is also an intestinal bypass done with the gastric bypass - 18 inches to 5-7 feet of the small gut are bypassed and unused. So what happens when that bypassed intestine sits 'out there' cooking with not much going through it? Sometimes it rots. Sometimes even the connected small gut rots in places. The tiny pouch produces little to no stomach acid and that's why it's said that the gastric bypass "cures" GERD i.e. acid reflux - because there IS NO acid to reflux! Without stomach acid to sanitize the food, bacteria can have the freedom to do what it does best. Grow. And hungry bacteria eat at the gut. That's why the gut sometimes rots.

Some surgeons are honest about whether the gastric bypass is reversible. Dr Louis Flancbaum tells his patients (and wrote in his book also) that the gastric bypass is like re-decorating your house. It would be pretty impossible to go back to the way it was before surgery.

Surgeons can undo parts of the surgery and they call this a "takedown." They reconnect the stomach and small gut in order to allow the person more nourishment.

In a takedown surgery, a hole or 'stoma' is made in the larger piece of the stomach (the bypassed part) and the pouch piece is connected to the larger piece so that food which goes into the pouch travels to the larger stomach, gets digested and goes to the bypassed part of the intestine, the part which digests vitamins.