[Irving]

Originally Posted by fr1endly2

YES merle...
Gastric bypass surgery is a MAJOR surgery.
AND its important that a patient is in tip
top condition going into this surgery.

PULMONARY is very important because many morbidly obesite people have sleep apena...that needs to be in control before major surgery so that if your treated and while resting you dont stop breathing and scare the hosptiol staff.

CARDIOLOGIST: well we all know a morbidly obesite person is very much at risk for a heart attack. BEST to be sure pre op that your in tip top shape then have a heart attack during your surgery or recovery. MANY
people have taken the phen phen and have heart damage from that alone. BEST to be safe going into.

GALL bladder songram: well many obesite people have damaged the gall bladder and attacks can be triggered by rapid weight loss, this way if your gall bladder is going bad, best to remove during the gastric bypass then have another surgery. MINE was fine and is still in tact. I took meds to keep my gall bladder functioning during my rapid weight loss months.

UPPER ENDOSCOPY: best to be sure there are no surprised the day of your surgery for gastric bypass so this will be sure your stomach is in great shape for redirection. ULCERS, bad acid reflux, stomach cancers
can be known before the day of the big surgery.

PSCY. evaluation: to my knowledge is mostly to be sure that a patient understands in full the risks of this surgery, possibly detect untreated
mental disorders ...and just be sure a person is mentally fit for such surgery. Depression hits post op and or some poeple have pre op anxiety this can help them .

NUTRITIONIST: helps us learn how to eat right clearly we didnt that we lost control ....helps learn the way of eating post op as well.

Also had to have the standard hospitol pre op testing as well that all hospitols do for any surgery big or small,,,,EKG, blood work little physcial.

ALOT of these clearances can vary from surgeon to surgeon and also
will depend on the age of the patient haveing the surgery. I came out of my surgery complication free and i feel being cautaus cant hurt.

this is fantastic information i had no idea there were so many hurdles to being able to have this type of obesity surgery! thank you so much for this wonderful post!

Originally Posted by jblack

Let's see... I had to do a stress test, endoscopy, colonoscopy, MRI, heart and neck sonnogram, and a sleep study before my primary care physician would give the OK for the surgery and write his letter of recomendation. They weren't insurance requirement individually, but a letter from him was, so I had to do them.

And I had to meet with a nutritionist and a psychologist (not Mary Jo from the show, lol), before Dr. Davis would send his letter of recomendation.

so it is really up to the doctor's discretion regarding what tests he wants to have done before he writes a recommendation letter to the insurance company so that they will cover this? that makes sense.