Bariatric embolisation

Obesity leads to many comorbid conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, sleep apnea, and stroke; therefore, there is a critical need to find solutions to this widespread problem. Treatment can entail diet, exercise, medication, and surgery.

Bariatric embolization is a new promising minimally invasive procedure that can reduce the sensation of hunger for treating patients with morbid obesity. It targets ghrelin, the hunger hormone, and patients will become less hungry.

The procedure is done under local anesthesia where a tiny catheter is navigated into the arteries feeding the fundus of the stomach from a pinhole in the groin. Small gelatin particles are injected into these small arteries to decrease blood flow to the fundus where ghrelin is produced.

The procedure can be done with one-night hospital admission and patients can go home the next day with very little discomfort. This innovative therapy involves new technologies, such as 3D navigation, microcatheters, and state of the art x-ray imaging devices

Patients have shown promising weight loss in the first month after the procedure and an average excess weight loss of roughly 10 percent at 3 months.