Intragastric Balloon Aplication

Gastric Balloon is an application which has been increasingly gained popularity in recent years. The most important advantage of this method is to be performed endoscopically without general anaesthesia requirement.

Internal volume of the stomach is durable to be inflated with fluid or air between 400-700 cc. Restriction of the stomach volume is provided due to this additional volume and so over food intake is constrained because of the stomach volume has been decreased.

Approximate duration of the implementation is 15-20 min. Hospitalization is not necessary and the patients are discharged after 5-6 hours monitoring and intravenous serum application.

Nausea, vomiting and pains like cramp can be observed post application, particularly at first 48 hours. Medical treatment is applied to remove such diseases. Those complaints are temporary and the patient will considerable relief after around 1 week.

Gastric Balloon Application is a non-surgical teraphy. It is an adequate choice specially for the patients which don’t consider the surgical teraphy but can not loss weight enough. However this application is limited in terms of duration, the balloon’s staying length at stomach is 180 days (6 months) maximum. It has to be removed after that period. Removing process is also carried out endoscopically and the patients return to their normal activation after 2 hours.

The patients can loss 30 – 90 % of their excess weights in the meantime. Achievement at the weight loss is closely associated with the patient collaboration. Calorie limitation is suggested to the patients after application. (1000-1200 Kcal). This limitation is performed easily because of the over food intake constraint due to application.

If the gastric balloon is considered to stay at the stomach more than 180 days then it must be necessarily replaced with the new one. The patients which consider that application have to change their eating habits in a 6 months period.

The complications associated to the gastric balloon application are rare. Balloon intolerance and rarely puncturing of the balloon have been declared at literature. It is necessary to removing the balloon endoscopically in such a case.

Consequently; Gastric Balloon is an easily applicable method which can be suggested to the obese patients those don’t consider surgical terapy or avoid from such surgical processes (gastric banding – staple or gastric bypass). However the patients have show effort to change their eating habits to provide lasting weight loss in a long term along with this method.

Assoc. Prof. Halil Coskun MD

halilcoskun@hotmail.com