News & Events: Weight-loss Surgery

Andrew Posselt, MD, PhD is a transplant and bariatric surgeon and professor of surgery at UCSF.  Dr. Posselt performs kidney, liver, pancreas and islet transplants. He is also among a handful surgeons in the country who also performs bariatric surgery for patients who would otherwise be transplant candidates, but for their BMI and weight.  Dr. Posselt is also director the pancreatic islet transplantation program and as a surgeon-scientist conducts breakthrough research in islet transplantation, tolerance or rejection of transplanted tissue, and the metabolic and biochemical changes seen in [...]

The December 2013 issue of San Francisco Medicine, the Journal of the San Francisco Medical Society, reportes on the pioneering work of Matthew Y.C. Lin, M.D. and Stanley J. Rogers, M.D., who are among those pioneering an incisionless endoscopic procedure called endoluminal suturing for patients who either have either: 1) gained weight 2) or failed to lose sufficient weight following bariatric surgery. This describes a phenomenon know as WR/IWL that occurs in 1 in 5 or 20% of bariatric surgery patients. It has been observed that the initial gastric bypass anatomy may enlarge or [...]

ABC News reports on the improved chance of having successful organ transplants in patients undergoing bariatric surgery: Gone may be the days of limiting bariatric surgery just to helping patients lose weight. Indeed, these weight loss surgeries, in all forms, do just as the name describes. But a slew of new research suggests bariatric surgery can also be used to help reverse medical complications of obesity, not just eliminate obesity itself. These procedures may reduce the risk of chronic disease, and even help patients better qualify for organ transplants, according to studies presented [...]

In a recent UCTV presentation, Jonathan Carter, M.D., Associate Professor of Surgery, discusses why Americans are increasingly obese and the medical and surgical approaches to treatment.

UCSF News reports on the "TOGA" study led by Stanley Rogers, MD, FACS, Associate Clinical Professor of Surgery and Co-Director of the UCSF Bariatric Surgery Center, and John Cello, MD, Professor of Medicine and Surgery, and Medical Director of Bariatric Surgery Center.  The investigational procedure, transoral gastroplasty, or "TOGA" for short, is being tested in a clinical trial. UCSF is one of nine U.S. trial sites. Drs. Rogers and Cello are principal investigators on the study. A team of specialists at UCSF Medical Center has treated its first patients as part of a multi-center clinical [...]

The NY Times reports on a recent study comparing  medical therapy vs. weight-loss surgery as a treatment for Type 2 Diabetes: Weight-loss surgery works much better than standard medical therapy as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes in obese people, the first study to compare the two approaches has found. The study, of 60 patients, showed that 73 percent of those who had surgery had complete remissions of diabetes, meaning all signs of the disease went away. By contrast, the remission rate was only 13 percent in those given conventional treatment, which included intensive counseling on diet and [...]