Randy Griffith
rgriffith@tribdem.com
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Weight-loss surgery changed Tammy Miller’s life.
“I am happy with myself,” the Friedens woman said. “I can buy clothes off the rack; I can cross my legs; I feel more normal.”
Laproscopic band surgery by Dr. Kim R. Marley at Windber Medical Center helped Miller lose
140 pounds since August 2008.
Anyone still struggling to shed the 15 pounds they put on over the holidays has a glimpse at the plight of those such as Miller, trying to lose
100 or 200 pounds. More and more of the estimated one in five people considered morbidly obese have found help through bariatric surgery available locally at Windber and Memorial medical centers and Somerset Hospital.
“They admit, ‘This is something I am not capable of doing myself and I want a tool to help me out,’ ” Marley said at Windber Medical Center. “It is a tool. It is not magic. There is no cure-all.”
Those with 100 pounds or more excess weight have it tough, Dr. D’Arcy Duke said at Memorial Medical Center’s weight loss clinic at Lee Campus.
“Diet and exercise is an option,” Duke said. “But in patients 100 pounds overweight, there is a 95 failure rate to maintain weight loss.”
Miller was one of those statistics.
She previously lost 135 pounds on her own.
“It came back,” Miller said. “I didn’t want to go through that again. I felt horrible.”
Weight-loss surgery options improve those odds, Duke and Marley noted.
Duke is one of four surgeons performing bariatric surgery at Memorial.
Marley is currently Windber’s only bariatric surgeon, but he has recruited Dr. Ifeoma Igboeli from New York to join his practice in August. Dr. Kumuda Pradhan has done about 200 procedures at Somerset Hospital in the last four years.
Although smaller, Windber’s program this month obtained two prestigious distinctions. It was named a Center of Excellence by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery and also garnered a five-star rating from the leading hospital ratings company, HealthGrades.
The HealthGrades ratings puts Windber among 19 percent of hospitals where complication rates and surgical outcomes were better than expected, compared with Memorial’s three-star rating that put it with 59 percent of hospitals where outcomes were about “as expected.”
Windber’s Center of Excellence distinction makes its bariatric program available to more patients because Medicare and some private insurance carriers will not cover weight loss procedures in hospitals without the recognition.
Highmark has always accepted qualified patients at Windber, Marley said, but now patients with Medicare or UPMC Health Plan coverage are eligible if they have a body mass index of at least 40, or 35 if the patient has diabetes or other obesity-related disease.
“We have over 300 people on a waiting list,” Marley said.
Memorial has a special agreement to accept UPMC Health Plan patients and is working on its Center or Excellence rating to accept Medicare patients, Duke said.
Insurance companies have been slow to accept weight-loss surgery, and some employers get less-expensive plans that don’t cover bariatrics, Duke noted.
She believes the insurance companies will soon see that successful weight-controlled patients are healthier and save money in the long run.
Weight-loss surgery can cure diabetes in many patients, Duke said.
“There is proven evidence,” she said. “If you have non-insulin dependent diabetes, after a (bariatric) bypass, I send you home on no medication. There are 85 percent who never need that medicine again.”
Other procedures also cure most diabetes within a few months through weight loss.
Savings from diabetes complications alone make weight-loss surgery a bargain, Duke said, pointing to vision, foot and heart issues related to diabetes.
High blood pressure and sleep apnea can also be reversed through bariatrics.
Programs at Windber, Memorial and Somerset offer the two major types of weight-loss procedures: The gastric bypass and gastric banding. In addition, Windber is introducing the sleeve gastrectomy.
Although complications and benefits differ, all three reduce the amount of calories absorbed by the body each day. Dramatic losses of up to 80 percent of excess body weight are common in the first year or two after surgery.
Gastric bypass removes a majority of the stomach and part of the small intestine.
Although it is the most invasive procedure, weight loss is the most dramatic.
Long-term success varies, and depends on each patient’s determination to succeed, the doctors say.
Local programs include numerous follow-up visits, counseling, dietary help and support groups.
“We are giving you the opportunity to control your weight,” Marley said. “The folks who get on board do the things they are supposed to do for excellent results.”
Miller is counting on it.
“I did what the doctors said,” she said. “I exercised and have a healthy diet. I feel healthy and I look better.”
Best of all, her outlook on life has been redefined.
“I am happy with myself.”
