What complications can occur after weight loss surgery?

It's fair to say that there's clearly quite strong benefits from bariatric surgery for overweight patients or obese patients. What are the complications you can get as a result of the surgery? Bariatric surgery is very safe when it's carried out in high volume centres by teams and surgeons that have an experience in performing these operations and looking after these specialised sorts of patients. Nationally, it is as safe to have a bariatric operation in one of these high volume centres like ours as it is to have your gallbladder or your hernia surgery carried out in your local hospital. However, all surgery has some risks. Those include bleeding, infection, pain, nausea and vomiting, hernias at the small cuts that we make to introduce the instruments called port-site hernias. If you eat the wrong food groups or eat too quickly, you may get nausea or vomiting. Depending on which procedure you have, you can get some diarrhoea. There is a condition called dumping syndrome which occurs if you eat the wrong food groups, particularly sugary foods, carbohydrates, pastas, ice creams, etc. But the whole point of the surgery is to get you away from eating these sort of food groups. surgery carries a small risk of getting clots in the legs or clots in the lungs. It's also very important to adhere to the other lifestyle program choices that we give you including increasing your mobility, stopping smoking and managing your medications so that they are optimized. This reduces the risk of bleeding, ulcers, heart problems and problems with gastrointestinal upset such as diarrhoea or constipation. All of these risks sound quite scary, but actually, that's less than 1% of patients that get them. That's less than one in 100. There are significant risks of getting anastomotic leaks or breakdown of the joints between stomach and small intestine, or small intestine and small intestine if you're having gastric bypass surgery, or leakage from any of our staple line. This complication is very rare, and in our unit, happens in less than one in a thousand patients. Surgery is a risky business, but we're in the business of looking after people. So if you have a complication, we will pick it up, look after you, and sort it out for you. Having complications doesn't mean that you've had bad surgery. It's usually just that you've had bad luck. It's important that we pick up the complications, you communicate with us, so that even if you are of the unfortunate few that has a significant complication of your surgery. It is fixed soon so that your long-term outcomes are not affected and that is what we are interested in. Thank you.