Gastric Plication and Sleeve Gastrectomy – Las Vegas Bariatric Surgeon

“I am a Bariatric and general surgeon. I completed a fellowship at USC in advanced laparoscopic surgery. We address a lot of complicated general surgeries such as complicated hernias and also complicated gall bladder disease. Although most of my practice is in bariatrics I still do these procedures.

Gastric sleeve and gastric plication involve making the stomach smaller, making the stomach, shrinking the stomach down to a long narrow tube. They both accomplish the same thing. The sleeve does it by actually cutting and taking out of the stomach, which is totally nonreversible.

Gastric plication does it by sort of folding the stomach into itself so that it is as big as a long narrow tube when you are done, and that’s reversible. The plication is newer, the research is still newer, and the results are newer, so we don’t know how effective it’s going to be and where it’s got to fit in.

It’s got to have a place somewhere, I don’t know where and as far as I see, one advantage with the sleeve is the hormonal changes of the sleeve that you don’t get with the plication. So the folks that are hungry all the time, to have that hunger drive, that will never go away.

That’s from a hormone called ghrelin. That hormone is going to be greatly decreased when you are going to do a sleeve operation. It’s not going to be effective when we do plication operation. So, I think for that reason alone, the sleeve is probably a better option for a lot of patients. Plication is very intriguing, so we don’t know where it’s going to fit our surgeries.”