A surgery that reduces the weight of a person by up to two-thirds has been successfully conducted at the Kathmandu Medical College, Sinamangal.

This medical process gives hope to morbidly obese patients and the procedure can be conducted at a minimal cost, said doctors.

In India, weight-loss surgeries cost up to 500,000 Indian rupees, while in Nepal it can be done at around Rs150,000 to Rs200,000. The surgery is conducted on persons who are excessively fat and despite repeated attempts have failed to shed weight.

The KMC conducted the operation on a 51-year-old woman on May 29 and she is faring well. A team of surgeons led by Dr Mukund Raj Joshi and anaesthetists led by Dr Sushila Tabdar and Dr Babu Raja Shrestha of KMC completed the “Total Laparoscopic Sleeve Gastrectomy” that reduces the volume of stomach while removing the “hunger hormone” known as Gherlin. Dr Shail Rupakheti, Dr Tanka Bohara and Dr Anuj Parajuli of the hospital were also involved in the surgery. Dr Bohara has a special training on weight-loss surgery from Medanta Hospital, India.

The surgery basically reduces the accommodation capacity of the stomach and with reduced craving for food, people slowly begin to lose their weight as much as 66 percent in three years.

“Maintaining a strict diet following the operation will drastically reduce weight,” said Dr Joshi. He said it took them around six months of meticulous planning

before Shrestha went under the knife.

Shrestha of Hattisar, Kathmandu, who weighed 123 kg at the time of surgery, hopes her life will be better. “It was hard for me to sleep and even stand up. Life was miserable,” said Shrestha. “I have got a new life. I have already started feeling better.”

In case of Shrestha, the doctor has dissected a chunk of her stomach—she can hold only 100 ml of food now. An adult person can hold up to one litre to one-and-a-half litres of food in the stomach.

There is no data on morbidly obese patients in Nepal although some studies have shown that around 30 percent of the population might have obesity.

There are basically two standard criteria for persons to qualify for the surgery—if the body mass index, a relationship of height and weight, is more than 35 and the

person has diseases including diabetes, hypertension and thyroid; and persons with BMI more than 40.

International researches show that such weight-loss surgery or bariatric surgery has been linked to controlled level of diabetes along with improvements in fertility and quality of life.