Gastric bypass can be done in two ways. With open surgery, your surgeon makes a large surgical cut to open your belly. The bypass is done by working on your stomach, small intestine, and other organs.

In most cases, at least one of the blood vessels used as a bypass graft is an artery from your chest called the internal mammary artery. Blood vessels such as a vein from your legs and sometimes an artery from your arms are used for the other grafts.

A surgical procedure called biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch, or “mixed surgery,” involves two separate procedures. The first procedure is similar to gastric sleeve surgery. A second surgical procedure divides the small intestine into two tracts.

Hemorrhage. Bleeding from the surgical wound or inside your body can lead to shock when it’s severe.

The fact is that shedding some extra pounds before surgery can have a significant impact. Not only will it reduce the risk of gastric bypass complications, but the lower your body mass index (BMI) prior to surgery the more weight you are likely to lose and the less likely you will be to experience weight gain after gastric bypass surgery.

The second step is the bypass. Your surgeon connects a part of your small intestine (the jejunum) to a small hole in your pouch. The food you eat will now travel from the pouch into this new opening and into your small intestine below where it would normally go, thus bypassing part of your small intestine. As a result, your body will absorb fewer calories.

Weight-loss surgery is mostly done laparoscopically, which requires only small cuts, under general anesthesia. Through these incisions, the surgeon can insert thin tools and a small scope attached to a camera that projects images onto a video monitor.

Diets you've tried. What did you like or dislike about them? Were you able to follow the diet? What worked or didn't work? How did you feel physically and emotionally while on the diet?

If there are many blockages or if the blockages are positioned in places that are difficult for a catheter to reach (for example, at a bend fast weight loss with surgery in a blood vessel), your doctor may recommend bypass surgery as your best alternative.

Coronary bypass surgery is a type of surgery where the chest is opened and surgery is performed on the heart. It’s used to bypass – or ‘get around’ - the narrowed or blocked sections of your coronary arteries.

You may need bypass surgery if you’ve been diagnosed with coronary heart disease. Coronary heart disease is when your coronary arteries (which move blood to the heart) get narrowed or blocked by a build-up of fatty material within their walls.

To ensure your body continues to receive a flow of oxygen-rich blood, you will be hooked up to a heart-lung machine. This machine takes over the pumping action of the heart and the work of the lungs.

The table below lists some of the more common diets. There's overlap, but most plans can be grouped into a few major categories.

Visits with your provider to make sure other medical problems you may have, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart or lung problems, are under control.