Doctors performing weight loss surgeries can probably benefit from the following discovery. With a highly imaginative approach, Irish company Crospon has now released a tool, an imaging catheter named the EF-620 that improves the outcome of weight loss surgery. The latest offering allegedly allows surgeons to measure the size of the stomach and passageways during weight loss surgery.
Since obesity turns out to be an epidemic, weight loss surgery appears as one of the fastest-growing categories of surgical procedures. During this surgery, the size of the stomach is reduced for possibly limiting the amount of food that a person can consume. For this a portion of the stomach has to be seemingly removed. In scientific terms such a procedure may be called gastric banding. However, some doctors apparently stitch the stomach to create a pouch or sleeve with reduced volume, known as gastric imbrication.
“Extra care has to be taken by the surgeon to ensure that a gastric plication sleeve is not stitched too tightly. A challenge of the procedure is that the surgeon has very limited ability to gauge the size of the sleeve being created. EndoFLIP provides a unique capability to allow the surgeon to measure the inner diameter of the sleeve as it is being created. We believe that the ability to measure the sleeve size during this procedure will be essential to allow such sleeves to be created safely and consistently,” explained John O’Dea, CEO of Crospon.
As of now, surgeons apparently have no reliable means of quantifying and standardizing the pouch size. And in the case of gastric band procedures, the possibility of measuring tightness at time of surgery can also cause a decrease in the number of adjustments as well as follow-up procedures. The newly introduced device reportedly helps surgeons to figure out why for some patients sleeve gastrectomy appears unsuccessful.
The crafted product can seemingly help improve the success rates of weight loss surgery.