What's Going To Happen While Having Your Lap Band Surgery

By Kate Jones


Once you arrive in the operating room for your lap band procedure, the nurse will have you move onto the operating room bed. The anesthesiologist or CRNA will start placing monitors on you, and the circulating nurse might be placing SCD's on your legs or feet. After all monitors are placed, the anesthesiologist or CRNA will start having you breath oxygen through an oxygen mask. Soon after, you will start getting medication through your IV to make you unconscious. You will be receiving general anesthesia for this procedure which means you will have a breathing tube placed. Once the medication has taken effect and you are unconscious, the anesthesiologist or CRNA will insert the breathing tube. After the breathing tube is in place, you will be positioned and prepped for surgery. If you are a male, your abdomen will probably be shaved. You may have a catheter placed in your bladder to drain urine. The circulating nurse will then "prep" your abdomen with a betadine or chlorhexidine gluconate antiseptic antimicrobial skin cleanser.

When your belly is prepared with the skin cleanser, the surgical team will put sterile drapes over you. You're going to be covered completely using these sterile drapes except for the area of which they'll be making the incisions. Soon after the drapes are in place, and all of the devices the surgeon will be using is hooked up and ready to go, the lap band procedure will start.

The surgeon will begin by making several small incisions in your abdomen. These incisions will be used to put the laparoscope and laparoscopic tools through. Carbon dioxide gas is then pumped in to inflate your abdomen; this is done to make it much easier for the surgeon to see. The surgeon will use the laparoscope to see inside your abdomen without having to make a large incision and open your belly. The surgeon will be looking at a monitor which the video from the laparoscope will be sent to throughout the lap band procedure.

A unique adjustable round band will be inserted through one of the small incision sites, and very carefully placed surrounding the upper part of your stomach utilizing the laparoscopic instruments. After the band is put within the appropriate position, it will be fastened in place. An access port that's attached to the band with specific tubing will be placed into the abdominal wall. This access port is placed to where it will be later used to modify the band. Through a specific needle and syringe to increase or take away saline, the band will become tight or loose. Right after the band and port are properly secured, the incisions are closed up with either staples or suture.

As soon as the lap band procedure is over the anesthesiologist or CRNA will begin to wake you up. You may notice them requesting you to open up your mouth or perhaps to squeeze their hand. They execute this to make sure you are awake enough to breath independently before they remove the breathing tube. They should then take the breathing tube out. You are moved onto a stretcher and they will wheel you into the recovery area or PACU (post anesthesia care unit).




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