When To Meet Your Doctor After Bariatric Surgery?
Today, we will discuss the importance of regular follow-up for patients who have undergone bariatric surgery. Bariatric surgery is different from other surgical procedures or other laparoscopic surgeries like gallbladder surgery or cholecystectomy, hernia surgery, or any other gastrointestinal tract surgery. Bariatric surgery is different as after this surgery patients, normally, have numerous questions regarding their weight loss, diabetes resolution, sleep apnea resolution, lipid levels in the blood, the amount of physical exercise they have to do, or the kind of lifestyle modification they have to follow. Thus, a surgeon must have a multidisciplinary team that constitutes a dietician, a physiotherapist, an endocrinologist, a physician, a psychologist, and nutrition surveillance in charge. This team will take care of these patients, solve their queries, monitor their parameters, and would correctly guide them. Therefore, my advice to all of you is that you should come for a regular follow-up post your bariatric surgery. At our center, we have a protocol of having a follow-up after 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years. This follow-up is done wherein the patients who will come to our center, will get all their blood tests done. Along with the blood tests, an upper GI endoscopy will be performed to rule out gastritis, ulcer, or any other pathology post-surgery, and complete counselling by every member of the multidisciplinary team is done.
Thus, after your bariatric surgery, go for a regular follow-up and let your team assess your nutritional status, the status of physical activity, and psychological status.
Thank you.