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Other complications that we worry about would be: developing an intestinal obstruction and that’s something that you might see in a gastric bypass but would very rarely see in a sleeve gastrectomy or a lap band. With a gastric bypass, that would occur at a pretty low rate of about 1%. Other things that we worry about would be developing a blood clot in the legs and that blood clot can break off and travel to the lungs. Now this can happen in anyone who has any operation. However, patients that are morbidly obese have a much higher risk of developing blood clots. What we do is we administer a blood thinner to every patient that is having weight loss surgery and we give this right before the operation and we also give it after the operation until the patient leaves and goes home. This significantly reduces the risk of developing blood clots. However, because we are giving the patient a blood thinner, it does slightly increase their risk of bleeding. However, this risk of bleeding is very small and generally does not pose a problem for us or for the patients.
