Bariatric Surgery Center—
When enough is enough.

“This is not cosmetic surgery, it is major elective surgery, with serious risks.”
—Professor of Surgery Howard Simon, MD Department of Surgery CNY Bariatric Surgery Center

Dangerously overweight, continually exhausted and taking 14 pills a day for obesity-related health issues, 35-year-old Sandy finally realized this was no way to live. Two years ago, she turned to University Hospital's Bariatric Surgery Center to learn more about gastric bypass surgery—an elective, and extreme, procedure for select patients who are at least 100 pounds overweight and have failed to lose weight or sustain weight loss through conventional diet and exercise programs.

Life-altering gastric bypass surgery permanently reduces the size of the stomach—and reduces the amount patients can eat to about six teaspoons per meal. Sandy worked with her University Hospital team for 10 months prior to her surgery, to be sure she was an appropriate candidate.

Two years later, Sandy is 96 pounds lighter, energetic and free of the life-threatening diabetes, hypertension and high-cholesterol that once accompanied her obesity.

"This is not cosmetic surgery, it is major elective surgery, with serious risks," insists Sandy's surgeon, Dr. Howard Simon. “But in the long run, there's clearly a survival benefit. Morbid obesity is the second leading cause of preventable, premature death. Ninety percent of patients who have this surgery no longer have diabetes. Seventy percent of patients with hypertension or high cholesterol improve enough to discontinue their medications."

Sandy, who now leads support groups for bariatric surgery patients, is the first to caution that gastric bypass surgery is not a magic wand. "But it's the best decision I ever made," she says.