What is a Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass?

What is a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass? This is a keyhole surgery that we perform to treat obesity. The surgery takes approximately 60 minutes to 90 minutes and is performed with keyhole or laparoscopic surgery. The patient will be asleep under anesthetic. The first step involves the surgeon inflating gas into the abdomen to create a working space, and then the surgeon will then insert instruments through these keyhole incisions. The operation will begin first by making the stomach smaller, so one creates a small pouch which is normally about the size of an egg, and the food has to go somewhere, so the surgeon then divides the small bowel and connects the small bowel to the new stomach pouch. So now food will travel through your gullet or your esophagus into the small gastric pouch and then into the intestine directly, thereby bypassing the remaining or the old stomach, which is still inside you but remains bypassed. The final step of the operation includes joining up the intestine coming from the old stomach to the intestine coming up from the new stomach and that's the final join that is done.