You’ve tried diet and exercise but still haven’t seen the weight loss you desire. You may even find yourself gaining weight despite your best efforts. Meanwhile, you worry about how your weight is affecting your overall health — your blood pressure, cholesterol, maybe even your fertility.

Weight loss surgery, also called bariatric surgery, could be the solution you’ve been looking for.

Bariatric surgery changes the anatomy of the stomach and digestive system and creates changes in the body that alter energy balance and fat metabolism. Medical experts agree that when combined with a comprehensive treatment plan — including nutrition, exercise and behavior modification — bariatric surgery is the most effective tool for long-term weight loss and enhanced quality of life for those with a BMI of 35 or above.

Learn more about bariatric surgery at Ohio State

Our free guide will walk you through all of the steps in the surgical weight-loss journey at Ohio State and help you decide if bariatric surgery is right for you.

Download our guide

Our skilled multidisciplinary team at Ohio State can help you achieve and sustain the life-changing weight loss you’ve been hoping for.

• With more than 30 years of bariatric experience, Ohio State is recognized as a Bariatric Surgery Center of Excellence by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Our experienced surgeons perform hundreds of bariatric surgeries each year — more than any other program in central Ohio — with complication rates much lower than national standards.
• You’ll be evaluated for bariatric surgery based on your BMI, existing health conditions, previous weight loss attempts and commitment to transforming your lifestyle.
• If you qualify, your surgical options will include gastric bypass, sleeve gastrectomy or, on a case-by-case basis, another type of surgery.
• Gastric bypass is a procedure that keeps you from eating a lot of food at one time and absorbing everything you eat. Through this surgery, a pouch about the size of an egg is made from the stomach and connected to a re-routed portion of the small intestine, changing the digestive pathway of the food you eat. We were the first to perform minimally invasive gastric bypass surgery in central Ohio.
• A sleeve gastrectomy, or gastric sleeve, is a restrictive surgical weight loss procedure that limits the amount of food you can eat and helps you feel full sooner. In this procedure, a thin, vertical sleeve of stomach is created and the rest of the stomach is removed. The sleeve is about the width of a garden hose.
• No matter your procedure, this is more than just a surgery. At Ohio State, we offer a comprehensive, multidisciplinary program with a team of experts who will be key to your success. Your care team will include surgeons, nurses, psychologists, cardiologists, dietitians and other health and medical experts. No two patients are the same, so we fit your treatment to you.

Many Ohio State bariatric surgery patients find their lives quickly transformed.

• The average hospital stay is one to two days, with recovery time from two to four weeks. Almost all bariatric surgeries are laparoscopic, or minimally invasive, which means:
  • less pain after surgery
  • fewer noticeable scars
  • less skin and muscle tissue trauma
  • fewer wound complications
  • earlier mobility
• Your results won’t take long: With gastric bypass surgery, most patients lose between 60% and 85% of their excess body weight over a period of 12 to 18 months, and sleeve patients lose 60% to 70% of excess weight in 24 months.
• Not only can bariatric surgery help you lose weight, but it can also help you put your health back on track. It’s been proven to lower the risk of associated medical conditions, including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep apnea, high cholesterol and even infertility.
• After surgery, you may find that you need fewer medications to treat obesity-related conditions such as arthritis, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes.
• On average, patients who have bariatric surgery also have lower rates of premature death caused by heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.

Meet an Ohio State gastric bypass patient

Shaun had always been overweight. “Big boned,” his mother called it. When he graduated from high school, he tipped the scales at 320 pounds. Years later, when he decided to undergo bariatric surgery at Ohio State, he weighed 331 pounds and took 10 pills a day, requiring sky-high amounts of insulin to control the diabetes he’d lived with for nearly three decades.

Gastric bypass helped Shaun shed the weight and find new hope in his life. Today, he’s 120 pounds lighter and off nearly all of his medications. He no longer has to think twice about shooting basketballs or running along the beach with his daughter.

See Shaun’s story.