Laparoscopy; Obesity surgery has been performed laparoscopically since the early 2000s. Laparoscopic operations, also known as closed surgeries, are operations performed with special tools by creating millimetric holes without opening the abdomen with large incisions.
The experience of the surgeon who will perform the surgery is the most important parameter in the selection of procedures. As a result; Laparoscopy is a gold standard practice in obesity surgeries and enables patients to return to their normal lives much earlier.
In general surgery, it was first applied in gallbladder surgeries and then started a new era in the intra-abdominal surgeries of general surgery. Today, surgery for almost all diseases, from emergency intra-abdominal operations to internal abdominal cancer surgeries, can be performed laparoscopically.
Laparoscopic surgeries have very important advantages. It has dozens of advantages such as very little postoperative pain, a much better cosmetic result, and much less infection in the wound site. Since bariatric surgery procedures have been applied laparoscopically, the apparent postoperative side effects have been greatly reduced.
Open surgeries were difficult for both the surgeon and the patient because of the severe abdominal fat in morbidly obese patients and the very thick subcutaneous adipose tissues. The number of patients undergoing bariatric surgery has increased dramatically after laparoscopic procedures have been initiated.
Currently, laparoscopic obesity surgery is the most common general surgery operation performed after laparoscopic gallbladder surgery in the United States.
In our country, according to the data of the Ministry of Health in 2017, 17,000 obesity surgeries are performed annually. The fact that this number was around 400-500 per year in 2009-2010, when I started my first obesity surgeries, we can see how far our country has made in obesity surgery.
It is unquestionably the gold standard method for laparoscopic obesity surgery. But laparoscopic technology is advancing rapidly. Currently, UHD, 3D, robotic technologies are available and open to development.