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US firm wants to tackle obesity with at-home stomach pump!

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wrestlingguy

"Bitter Old Man"
Joined
Sep 29, 2005
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Can you say medically assisted bulimia??

Here's the article (link to article below):

A US patent application has been made for an unlikely weight loss tool: a tube installed from inside the stomach, out the abdominal wall, that allows patients to manually pump their meal straight out.

Aspiration Therapy, designed by Philadelphia-based Aspire Bariatrics, is intended to be a non-invasive alternative to a gastric bypass -- the "A-tube" installation process looks like a bit of a mouthful though. On the upside, according to a video on the company's website the whole ordeal takes under 20 minutes and patients can return home within a couple of hours.

Under a light sedation (already a better alternative to gastric bypass surgery, during which a patient is put under anesthesia), an endoscope is fed through the mouth to the patient's stomach. There, it meets a needle the doctor inserts from outside the stomach (this will become the entry point for extraction). A wire is then passed through the needle into the stomach, which is grabbed by the endoscope and dragged back up the oesophagus and out the mouth. The A-tube is then passed down the wire, from the mouth, with the doctor pulling on the other end of the wire till it pops out a one centimetre incision in the belly. A bumper sits in the stomach stopping the tube from slipping out of place. While the patient heals the tube will have to hang out quite a way, but after about ten days or so can be snipped to skin level and a "skin port" attached as a valve to allow for selective stomach pumping.

The stomach-churning process has been trialled on 24 clinically obese patients to date. Data from those trials reveals that patients lost an average of 20kgs in the first year, and those who decided to adapt their eating habits as well as using the device lost 100 percent of their excess weight. This, however, is a little misleading, from a cursory glance at the patent application. As the New Scientist points out, it seems the system actually forces patients to change their eating habits in some cases.

One female patient lost 38kg over the course of the 59 weeks she used the system. She "aspirated" after every meal: "the patient uncapped [her] tube, connected a 60 cc syringe and extracted food from her stomach twice. This resulted in a siphon effect, which permitted the subject to freely drain the stomach by allowing the open tube to empty into a bucket. The patient squeezed the tube to enhance propulsion and to break up large food." Beyond the troubling mental image this provides, the latter sentence is key. Not only did this particular dieter have to watch her stomach contents slop into a bucket straight from her innards, she also had to give them a helping squeeze for added artificial digestion.

By doing this, and drinking water between each extraction, she managed to expel two to three litres over the course of 20 minutes, but found that she would sometimes have to flush out the tube with water and eventually cut out cauliflower, broccoli, Chinese food, stir fry, snow peas, pretzels, chips and steak to allow for easier extraction.

The prototype, which was co-invented by Segway creator Dean Kamen, has so far not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.


http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-01/04/self-stomach-pump-for-dieters
 

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