Fifteen years' experience with gastric partitioning for obesity treatment

Most reports derived from experiences in Western countries indicate that surgery offers the best hope for morbidly obese patients. We report our experience with gastric partitioning in 63 Chinese patients (17 men and 46 women) aged 14 to 42 years, whose preoperative excess weights ranged from 62.3% to 166.7% above their ideal body weight. Transverse stapling was performed in 30 patients treated before April 1983, while vertical stapling gastric partitioning with a window and a Marlex band to encircle the outlet tract was done in 33 patients after that. No patient died, but one had leakage at the anastomosis. Success was defined as a return to within 50% of the ideal body weight. Vertical-windowed gastric partitioning with a Marlex-banded outlet resulted in a significantly higher success rate than transverse stapling--70% vs 37%. Our experience suggests that vertical-windowed gastric partitioning with a Marlex-banded outlet is a safe and effective surgical treatment for morbidly obese Chinese people.