LAP-BAND surgery costs approximately $3,500 with insurance and $15,000 without insurance. Your final out-of-pocket expenses are determined by:
- Prices related to the hospital and surgeon you select (if the treatment isn’t covered by insurance, this won’t effect out-of-pocket costs); if it is covered, this won’t affect out-of-pocket costs.
Read on to learn everything you need to know about the cost of LAP-BAND surgery in the sections below.
Does insurance cover Lap-Band surgery?
If you satisfy certain criteria, health insurance now covers bariatric surgery. The extent of your coverage is determined by the medical insurance plan you choose. In India, health insurance companies allow claims for morbid obesity, co-morbidities, and life-threatening diseases that are specified in the policy. If your doctor recommends bariatric surgery, you may be eligible for financial assistance. In most cases, you must provide documentation to the insurer that the surgery is medically necessary.
Bariatric surgery had been a typical exclusion in mediclaim coverage until 2019. Many insurance companies now cover bariatric surgery as a result of technical breakthroughs and new IRDAI guidelines. However, the benefit is only available if the procedure is medically essential and not for cosmetic reasons.
How overweight do you have to be for Lapband?
To be eligible for Lap-Band surgery, you must have a BMI of 40 or higher, OR a BMI of 30 or higher and obesity-related comorbidities, such as type 2 diabetes. You must be at least 18 years old to participate.
Is the lap band worth it?
When compared to the other bariatric surgeries, the gastric band was the least successful at facilitating weight loss at 1-, 3-, and 5-year follow-up.” Nonetheless, some surgeons and patients believe it can be quite beneficial for long-term weight loss.
What is the safest weight loss surgery?
Each type of bariatric surgery has advantages and disadvantages. The surgeon recommends a surgical type based on the patient’s health and needs. Although all surgeries entail some risk, restrictive surgeries are safer than restrictive/malabsorptive surgeries since they do not interfere with the digestive system permanently.
Gastric Banding
This is the simplest and safest of the bariatric procedures. However, the weight loss is less than with the other procedures. Furthermore, people who have had gastric banding are more prone to gain weight in the long run. There is reduced risk of nutrient shortage because the operation has no effect on nutrient absorption.
Sleeve Gastrectomy
For severely obese persons with other health problems, this is a generally safe and easy surgery. Weight reduction is substantial, and nutritional absorption is unaffected. This is a relatively novel technique, and the long-term benefits and hazards are currently being assessed.
Gastric Bypass
This procedure allows for rapid weight loss that lasts for up to two years. It is beneficial to patients with obesity-related illnesses who want to improve their health swiftly. It also has a solid long-term weight-loss track record. Hernias and vitamin deficits due to malabsorption are the disadvantages. Dumping syndrome occurs when food is discharged from the stomach into the intestines before being thoroughly digested.
Duodenal Switch
This surgery is more difficult and risky than the others, and it is also less common. It causes faster weight reduction, but it also increases the risk of hernias, nutrient deficit, and dumping syndrome.
How do I know which weight loss surgery is best for me?
Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and sleeve gastrectomy are the two most popular weight-loss surgeries.
“Both treatments are good solutions for an average patient with extreme obesity since they are essentially similar,” explains bariatric surgeon Ali Aminian, MD. However, there are some factors that may tip the scales (pun intended) in one’s favor over the other.
What factors should you consider when deciding which weight-loss surgery is right for you? Dr. Aminian explains the many alternatives.
Bariatric surgery options
- You have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, fatty liver disease, or sleep apnea and are between the ages of 35 and 40.
Finding the proper surgery, however, necessitates a discussion with your bariatric surgeon. “We take into account the patient’s medical history, current health, and expectations.” “After that, we come up with a plan together,” Dr. Aminian says.
Almost all bariatric surgery treatments are now performed utilizing minimally invasive techniques. Smaller incisions (typically five or six in the abdomen) and speedier recovery times are the result. The majority of patients are able to return home the same day as their operation and recover in two to three weeks.
What is the newest weight-loss surgery?
A newer sort of minimally invasive weight-loss technique is endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty. A suturing device is introduced into your throat and down to your stomach during endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty. Sutures are then placed in your stomach by the endoscopist to make it smaller.
Is Lap Band surgery painful?
The third through seventh days might be challenging. You may experience severe hunger pangs and food cravings. You shouldn’t drive if you’re on pain medication, and your activities should be restricted. The majority of your friends and relatives will have returned to their normal schedule, while you remain at home. Boredom is a common occurrence.
You might be experiencing a persistent pain in your abdomen on a frequent basis. The majority of the discomfort will be felt at the location of the Lap Band port. This is usually found on your left side, a few inches beneath your ribcage. As needed, continue to take your pain medicine. Walking should be the only activity for the first week. Continue to walk for at least 30 minutes each day. Lifting anything heavy or engaging in strenuous exercise is not recommended.
For the first week after Lap Band surgery, a liquid diet is usually recommended. Your new best friend will be meal replacement shakes. Remove all tempting items from your pantry. It’s not worth risking a health problem for a few potato chips. It’s worth investing in a blender or a mixer/shaker bottle if you don’t already have one. Make sure you’re getting enough fluids and sipping slowly.
As directed, chew your vitamins and other supplements. Keep an eye on your bowel and urine motions. Your feces should not include any blood, and your urine should not be black. If it’s dark, drink more water and contact your surgeon’s office if it doesn’t get better.
Maintain the same exercise routine. Walk as much as you can as you get stronger. Don’t overwork yourself or do anything strenuous, but keep moving. Organize anything around the house that you’ve been putting off. Keep yourself motivated and don’t let boredom get the best of you.
Does Soonercare cover weight-loss surgery?
We all know how difficult it is to lose weight. There are numerous programs and treatments available to assist us in losing weight, but they all come at a cost. We’re paying some Oklahomans to lose weight, which you probably didn’t know.
Soonercare, Oklahoma’s Medicaid program, allows eligible patients to have bariatric surgery on our cost.
Nine Oklahomans have had lap band or gastric bypass surgery in the last five years. The cost of the operations alone was more than $85,000. Pre-op and post-op care are not included.
Before undergoing weight loss surgery, Soonercare patients must meet a comprehensive number of requirements, including having been diagnosed as obese for at least five years, having attempted other methods to lose weight, and having another health concern as a result of their weight. They must also lose 5% of their body weight before undergoing surgery.
While tax monies are used to pay Soonercare, the federal government provides 64% of the funding. The remaining 36% comes from state funds.
Why is the lap-band a failure?
Lindsay Green*, at 17 years old, decided that the only way she could lose weight was to get surgery.
Green was 6 feet tall and weighed 215 pounds at the time, which was “overweight” but not “obese” by medical standards. Nonetheless, she was fascinated when she heard about the laparoscopic gastric band operation, one of several regular weight-loss surgeries, on the radio in Phoenix, Arizona. “I was a young woman who was rather vulnerable,” she explained. “All I wanted to do was slim down.”
Her weight gradually reduced to a “normal” BMI of roughly 180 pounds after the $16,000 procedure. However, she now had to deal with an eating disorder. The band made eating difficult; she often felt as though her rib cage was being screwed shut after meals. She’d vomit to relieve the pressure.
“I figured if I’m going to throw up anyhow, I might as well eat whatever I want and as much as I want,” said Green, who now works in corporate wellness. Bags of Goldfish crackers or bowls of cereal were her go-to snacks; they hurt less than fibrous foods like broccoli. “That’s the polar opposite of what you’d want for when attempting to instill healthy eating habits in someone,” she noted.
Green ultimately had her band removed last year after four visits to the doctor’s office to have it adjusted. Her current weight is around 205 pounds. She’s relieved that the band is no longer inside her.
Green’s narrative, it turns out, is the exception rather than the rule. As the obesity crisis spreads across the United States, more and more people seeking therapy for their weight problems are turning to weight loss, or bariatric, surgery. However, since its introduction in 2001, the lap band has gone from being one of the most prevalent bariatric operations to being one of the least. Longer-term research is accumulating that shows lap bands cause too many medical issues and are inferior to other obesity operations in terms of weight loss.
Despite this, gastric bands are still used in about 11,000 of the over 200,000 weight loss surgeries performed each year. Researchers are increasingly contending that this is an excessive number.
How the lap band works and how it fails
- The first, like the lap band, involves limiting the size of the stomach. The technique is wrapping an inflatable band around the top region of the stomach to form a tiny pouch, with the goal of making people feel fuller faster, eating less, and losing weight.
- The second type, such as the small bowel bypass, which doctors no longer perform, interferes with how the body absorbs calories.
- The third group includes surgeries like gastric bypass and gastric sleeve that are both restrictive and produce calorie malabsorption or hormonal changes that impact hunger and satiety. These operations reduce the size of the stomach by removing a portion of it (and in the case of the bypass, rerouting the intestines). They are now the most widely used weight-loss procedures.
When the lap band procedure was first approved by the FDA in 2001, it was welcomed with a lot of excitement: the device appeared to be a safe choice for weight loss surgery that could be changed or removed at the patient’s discretion. It didn’t involve cutting the stomach or rerouting the intestines, unlike the gastric bypass or sleeve operations, and it could be reversed (which helps explain the band’s ongoing, albeit limited, appeal).
“Obesity researcher Jim Mitchell of the University of North Dakota School of Medicine stated, “It looked like it was going to be terrific.” “Nobody anticipated that it would be a problem.”
Green was drawn to the operation because of its simplicity and perceived safety, she said it was a simple fix for a complex problem.
Obesity researchers have discovered, however, that the lap band is everything but: It is now apparent that a significant number of individuals experience medical issues and require additional procedures following their initial procedure. “One of the reasons you need long-term outcome data is because of this,” Mitchell explained.
Researchers from the University of Michigan looked at 16 years of Medicare data to discover how common lap band surgeries are, and their findings were published in JAMA in May “After the first lap band treatment, there were “re-operations.” These procedures included everything from removing the band to replacing it, repairing it, or repeating the treatment with a different weight loss procedure (i.e., the gastric bypass). They discovered that 20% of the 25,000 lap band patients or one in every five required further treatment. This is significantly greater than the 3 to 9% re-operation rate for gastric bypass and sleeve operations.
Medicare paid $470 million for these operations between 2006 and 2013. Furthermore, the average number of procedures performed per lap band patient was 3.8.
Patients often struggle with weight loss after the band because it doesn’t create any physiological or hormonal changes like other bariatric operations. They have the same hunger pangs as before the surgery, but they are unable to consume the same amount of food. As a result, they discover ways to compensate, such as Green puking after eating. Other doctors informed me they’ve seen patients who drink milkshakes on a regular basis, consume mashed potatoes, or soften their biscuits with gravy to make them easier to swallow.
In a four-year study published in JAMA in 2016, bypass patients lost 27% of their original bodyweight, gastric sleeve patients dropped 17%, and band patients lost only 10% of their original bodyweight. This systematic review compiled the findings of numerous research on various weight reduction procedures and discovered the same pattern: band patients fared the poorest in terms of weight loss, whereas gastric bypass patients fared the best.
“If I were a patient,” Andrew Ibrahim of the University of Michigan, who analyzed the lap band re-operation rate, told me, “and those were the numbers provided to me, I would have a hard time accepting that risk when there are two other options that we know well can be done.”
As a result, several doctors no longer recommend lap bands to their patients. “Yoni Freedhoff, an obesity doctor in Ottawa, stated, “I would never suggest that.” “I wouldn’t want that to happen to my worst enemy.”
Other weight loss surgeries are more effective, but doctors will still keep doing the lap band
Patients are requesting the device less and less, and doctors are doing the lap band treatment less and less these days. Despite the safety and effectiveness problems, the lap band still accounts for around 6% of all weight loss operations: according to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, 11,000 of these devices were placed in patients in 2015.
According to Freedhoff, that’s still too many. He pointed out that the single-payer health system in Ontario, Canada, does not cover the band procedure but does support other bariatric procedures, and he believes that other payers might follow suit. (Insurers should consider withdrawing coverage for the lap band, according to the authors of a May JAMA report on the rate of re-operations, which included Ibrahim.)
However, as long as there are patients willing to pay, doctors will likely continue to do them, according to Freedhoff.
Green wishes that more people thinking about getting a lap band were aware of the risks and drawbacks. She had intended to get her band removed for several years, but she had to wait for insurance coverage to cover the $5,000 cost.
She’s now concerned that the heartburn meds she was using to alleviate the affects of vomiting might be affecting her bone density. She’s also concerned about the long-term health repercussions of all those years of being unwell and not getting the nourishment her body need.
“I’m still adjusting to a normal body,” she remarked, “one that doesn’t have a crazy plastic gadget mucking things up.”
*Lindsay’s name has been changed to protect her professional reputation.