“Bariatric surgery has been widely accepted in the medical field, but now we’re trying to apply it to specific patient groups,” said Matthew Y.C. Lin, M.D., a former UCSF MIS/Bariatric surgical fellow**, whose outstanding work led to a faculty appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery.
In a pilot study of 26 morbidly obese patients waiting for a kidney or liver transplant, Dr. Lin and colleagues in the UCSF Bariatric Surgery Program showed that laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy, a procedure that removes most of the stomach and reshapes it into a small tube or sleeve, significantly improved the chances of undergoing successful organ transplantation. “The reason why physicians are skittish about bariatric surgery for organ transplant is that these patients have more medical comorbidities,” said Lin, who is the lead author of the study. “But our study shows that it is safe to proceed.”
* Excerpts Above from American Society For Metabolic And Bariatric Surgery
**Minimally Invasive and Bariaric Surgery Fellowship underwritten by Foundation for Surgical Fellowship