The use of gastric bands for weight loss continues to rise, and medical professionals need to be alert to complications that can arise years after they are implanted, according to a new report from Great Britain.
The article follows the complications experienced by a 49-year-old British woman two years after she received a band. She had gone to a hospital to complain of night sweats and a continuing wet cough she had had for four months. Doctors finally determined that her problems stemmed from the gastric band’s tight fitting, which had caused holes in her lung and infection.
Symptoms like these can be mistaken for those of asthma, said Dr. Adam Czapran, an author of the report with Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley, West Midlands, U.K.
“Patients who have undergone laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding should have chest radiography or thoracic CT scan, or both, if they present with respiratory symptoms,” Czapran and other doctors wrote of their study, published in The Lancet. “Withdrawal of the fluid from the band should be done as soon as possible to relieve the obstruction. Given the increasing frequency of people undergoing interventional procedures to aid weight loss, recognition of the short-term and long-term complications is paramount.”
One in 10 gastric bypass patients in the United States experienced some form of complication, according to a 2005 study published in the medical journal Obesity.