Welcome to the Blog

We have transferred the last month’s messages over from the Yahoo Group site to keep everyone abreast of conference updates.

This year the conference will be over a four day period instead of three. The first day will be hosted by several weight loss surgery patients whose focus will be on motivation to achieve your weight loss surgery success. Some of these speakers you will know because they lead or run weight loss surgery sites or groups. Seminars, talks, debates and panels regarding motivation to continue ones weight loss journey will be a central theme. In addition the event focuses on weight loss surgeries and revisions, plastic surgeries, new theories regarding vitamin and nutritional deficiency in weight loss and the need to exercise precaution to ensure safety in the selection of ones surgeon. Safety will actually be one of the primary topics this coming year. For example, safety topics that will be covered include: discussing how important it is to choose certain surgeons over others, finding out what aftercare is like from previous weight loss surgery patients, and what to do when complications arise. How were these complications addressed recently? Several patients have already volunteered to host a panel discussing these particular topics.

I remember, in 2002, that surgical safety was discussed over and over on the Bandster sites and at that time Inamed, the bands' manufacturer, stated over and over to not have surgery unless the surgeon has done 50 proctored cases. We need to remind ourselves of this statement, particularly now when bypass and sleeve mortality is down due to thromboprophylaxis and staples. It's important to remind yourselves of this when picking a plastic surgeon. Do you know that there is upwards of a 35% chance of a major complication with abdominplasty and some other plastic surgeries? I didn't, and no one told me. I'll talk about this later. Updates soon.

Joanne
Coordinator of the Seattle Bash and Weight Loss Surgery Conference