Gastric Sleeve
The bariatric surgery team at the Center for Weight Management and Metabolic Health offers minimally invasive gastric sleeve surgery. This procedure reduces the size of your stomach and appetite while regulating your metabolism.
What Is Sleeve Gastrectomy (Gastric Sleeve) Surgery?
Gastric sleeve surgery (also called vertical sleeve gastrectomy) is an increasingly popular type of bariatric surgery. The procedure restricts how much food your stomach can hold, with minimal effect on the body's ability to absorb nutrients.
How Does Gastric Sleeve Work?
Our expert surgeons reduce the size of your stomach from about the size of a football to the size of a banana, helping you eat less and feel less hungry.
Minimally Invasive Gastric Sleeve
Surgeons at Cedars-Sinai use minimally invasive techniques whenever possible. We offer laparoscopic and robotic gastric sleeve surgery.
We make several small incisions and use tiny instruments to remove a portion of the stomach. Laparoscopic and robotic surgery can reduce pain, blood loss and recovery time.
Digestion After Gastric Sleeve Surgery
Digestion after gastric sleeve surgery is the same as before surgery, with one significant difference: volume. After gastric sleeve surgery, your stomach holds much less food at one time. You will feel full quickly and for several hours, which means you will need to eat less.
Reducing the size of the stomach also lessens the "hunger hormones" your stomach typically produces. You will likely feel a decline in appetite and feel less hungry. You may also experience a boost to your metabolism (the process your body uses to transform food into energy).
Together, these combined effects aid significant weight loss.
What to Expect After Gastric Sleeve Surgery
After gastric sleeve surgery, you may stay in the hospital for one to two days. You can expect to:
- Get active: We help you get up and walking soon after your procedure. Research has shown that the sooner your body is moving, the sooner it begins healing. Once you leave the hospital, regular exercise will be necessary to aid your weight loss goals. A step tracker is a great way to keep up with your exercise.
- Maintain a temporary liquid diet: After surgery, you will progress from a strictly liquid diet back to solid foods. Our dietitians help you plan your meals, so you know what to expect.
- Make meal changes: Your stomach won't hold as much food as it did before surgery. Rather than two or three large meals, you will eat three healthy meals per day and healthy snacks as needed.
After surgery, you will experience:
- Improvement in other health issues: Weight-related health conditions will improve. Diabetes, hypertension, joint pain, sleep apnea and other conditions resolve over a few months.
- Weight loss: In the first year after gastric sleeve surgery, you can expect to lose 60% of the excess weight. Long-term success is encouraging: Five years after surgery, 85% of people have kept at least 50% of the weight off.
Have Questions or Need Help?
To make an appointment or refer a patient, call us or send a message to the Weight Loss Program. You can also have us call you back at your convenience.