Incision-Free Weight Loss Surgery in Experimental Phase ( Part 2)

After the surgery, the patient is placed on a liquid diet for several weeks and warned that eating too much or too fast could cause vomiting. Nutritionists say the best time to lose weight is in the 6 to 12 months following the surgery, because the body will try to fight the surgery by absorbing more nutrients.

Over the past several years, 98 patients in Mexico and Europe have had the new weight-loss surgery. Those who have passed the one-year mark have lost about 40 percent of their excess weight, on average. But in the U.S., the procedure is strictly experimental and has been used on only a few patients as part of a study paid for by the device maker, Satiety Inc.

Satiety, Inc. was founded in 2001 through a collaboration of medical device incubators Thomas Fogarty Engineering and The Foundry, and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Other companies are also developing new devices and minimally invasive operations, but Satiety is among the first to start testing its products in people.

Karleen Perez, a 25-year-old graduate student in social work, was the second patient at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia to enter the study. Dr. Marc Bessler and Dr. Daniel Davis performed the procedure Ms. Perez, while Satiety employees advised. “It (the procedure) has a lot of promise,” Dr. Bessler said. “I deal with a lot of new technologies. This, I’m really excited about.” Dr. Bessler said that he and Dr. Davis had no financial interest in Satiety other than the company paying for their work on the study.

Dr. Philip Schauer, director of bariatric surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, called the new operation very promising and said that so far it seemed to offer “a drastic reduction in side effects and risk.” Dr. Schauer was not involved in the Toga study.