Gastric Band Clinic

The patient journey through a Gateway health Gastric Band Clinic

The journey starts before you arrive in our gastric band clinic for your first appointment. At Gateway we believe you need some time to be able to answer all the questions on our "health questionnaire", so we send it to you before the clinic appointment. You can then take your time and answer all questions fully and honestly. We never pre judge a patient, even if someone asks specifically for a gastric band, we still have an open mind as to the most appropriate treatment for the patient until we have met you and worked through your situation and medical history. The decision is always yours, however, we will make recommendations. We will discuss potential complications and describe to you the way things will work for you on your programme.

• Gastric Band Clinic - proceeding with surgery
  Once you have decided on the procedure you would like, if it is a gastric band, and there are no unusual complications, we liaise closely with our surgeons, anaesthetists and hospital teams, providing full details of your medical history, eating patterns and weight profile. The consultant considers each patient, carefully weighing the health risks of being overweight/obese against the known risks of the surgery. With any operation there are risks. We can minimise these risks in many ways, but we can’t ever remove all risk. We work hard to ensure that you have all of the information you need in order to make an informed decision about a particular treatment.
  

• Booking your procedure at a Gastric Band Clinic
  We book your procedure with the hospital and weight loss surgeon of your choice and the date is set. Before the operation we provide you with all of your pre and post operative instructions, this includes the specific dietary preparations involved in your treatment plan, foods you can eat etc during the first phase of your weight loss programme. Our patients really value this written information so that they can prepare themselves and get organised for what is to come.
  

• Staying in touch with your Gastric Band Clinic
  Once the surgery is complete and you go home (usually after an overnight stay in hospital), your specialist nurse will talk to you each day to make sure you are OK. We will see you in clinic after the first week to check that your recovery is going well and that there are no problems with the surgery, check your dressings and have a chat about how you are progressing with your new way of eating and thinking about food.
  

• Gastric Band Clinic aftercare
  The long term support and education programme ensures that you will receive the band adjustments you require whilst also receiving the life coaching and food practice that you will need to enable you to work with your band for the rest of your life. We know that our patients also like to keep in touch after the first year of the programme - they really value the peace of mind that comes from knowing they can pick the phone up for a chat, some advice or to arrange another gastric band adjustment.