Questions to ask your surgeon
Listed below are questions to ask surgeon at the time of consultation.
Patients’ should not be afraid to ask a surgeon about their mortality and complication rates; any reputable surgeon will be happy to discuss those statistics with a patient. Note, that all surgeons will have complications and any surgeon that claims there are no complications, may not be paying close attention to the patients to know when the complications occur!
Experience Performing Duodenal Switch
How long has the surgeon been in practice?
What bariatric procedures are performed?
How many of each procedure is performed annually?
Where was training received in the Duodenal Switch (DS) procedure?
How long has it been since performing Duodenal Switch (DS)?
What criterion determines if a patient will be considered or qualify for Duodenal Switch?
How many DS surgeries are performed open-laparoscopically?
What criterion determines a patient having a surgery done laparoscopically?
What is laparoscopic to an open conversion rate?
How many two-stage duodenal switch procedures are performed? And why?
How many DS procedures started, but were unable to complete? Reasons?
Are there any post-op patients available to talk to?
Complication and Mortality Rates
What is the operative mortality rate for the surgeon considered?
What is the percentage of major complications? What types of complications? What were the causes for these complications?
What is the percentage of minor complications? What are the types of complications?
Procedural Preferences
What size of is the stomach? (Note that the evidence placed relatively little value to the size of the stomach with regards to the short-term outcome of DS [72]).
How are the small bowel lengths for common, alimentary and the biliopancreatic determined? Percentage based (Hess Method) or an absolute –predetermined length?
Will the gallbladder or appendix be removed during surgery?
Is a leak test performed during surgery or post-op?
Will a liver biopsy be done?
How will the incisions be closed; staples, stitches, other?
Revision Patients
How many revisions will be performed?
How many ___ to DS revisions have you done?
What is the percentage of revision patients with major complications? Types?
Mortality rate and causes of death?
Insurance- directed to the office staff
Do you accept my insurance?
If I have encountered problems in my insurance approval, will your office assist me?
If I have to pay a portion of the costs that my insurance doesn’t cover, will you accept payments?
Do you require a deposit? If so, how much?
Self-Payers-directed to the office staff
What is the cost of the surgery and what does it include?
Do you require a deposit? If so, how much?
Does it include after-care? For how long? What specifically does it cover?