Kerala hospital offers gastric bypass surgery

Kerala's medical tourism initiatives seem to have received a boost with the Thiruvanathapuram-based Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) setting up the facility for gastric bypass surgery to combat morbid obesity. It is the first in South India.

The institute performed the first gastric bypass surgery on a 26-year-old Kuwait national, Haifaa Mohammed Al Sanie. Suffering from morbid obesity, she weighed 140 kg and had related problems. Before the surgery here, Haifaa underwent various weight reduction diet regimes, but to no avail.

She also underwent a gastric banding operation in Kuwait, which proved unsuccessful. Finally, she became the first patient to undergo gastric bypass surgery here. Haifaa would leave for her country after a week.

Elaborating on the surgery, renowned laparoscopic surgeon Mohammed Ismail, who performed the surgery on Haifaa, assisted by surgeons Shafy Ali Khan and Firoz Khan and anesthesiologist George Joseph, said the initiative would be a landmark in the medical tourism scenario of Kerala.

"Obesity, known to surpass smoking as the biggest killer worldwide, needs to be addressed in a very effective manner. The gastric bypass surgery, performed on Haifaa, is the definitive surgical procedure for the problem," he said.

Morbid obesity is a condition where the body mass index (BMI) is above 40 (30 -35 in the case of individuals in the Asia Pacific region). It leads to diseases like diabetes, high BP, knee joint problems, cancer and other problems.

Patients are usually advised to take a diet regime to know whether they stick to a prescribed diet. They are then taken up for the surgery. Surgical options include gastric banding which involves putting a band across the stomach to reduce its capacity, and various bypass procedures.

The most popular is the gastric bypass, which is basically a keyhole surgery. Patients who undergo the procedure achieve 40 per cent to 60 per cent weight loss in a year and even up to 80 per cent by surgical modifications.

More enquiries are coming in from the US and European regions from patients suffering from the problem.