Howard University News Service
Dr. Terrence Fullum prepares to operate on a patient. (Courtesy Photo/Howard University News Service)
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(July 6, 2009) - For years, Alfreda Hill-Wilkerson had struggled with her weight, although she tried every weight loss program and fad diet imaginable.
But there she stood at 310 pounds, a weight that was threatening her life. Due to her morbid obesity, Hill-Wilkerson struggled with a variety of illnesses, including asthma, diabetes, hypertension and sleep apnea.
“I had done Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, NutriSystem, just about any and every diet that was out there,” she said. “I took 17 pills and two insulin injections a day. I was on an oxygen tank and used a walker to get around.”
In August 2001, Hill-Wilkerson was fed up and chose to undergo gastric bypass surgery, a medical weight loss procedure for patients considered morbidly obese and whose weight-related diseases threaten their lives.
Following the surgery, Hill-Wilkerson kept to a healthy diet and an exercise regimen, and the pounds rolled off.
Within 14 months, she lost 160 pounds and had gone from a size 22 to a size 8.
Best of all, she said, most of her related illnesses disappeared.
“It was life changing,” Hill-Wilkerson, 48, said. “That’s what this kind of surgery is. It’s a life-changing event.”
But after Hill-Wilkerson’s husband died in 2007, the pounds she’d vanquished years before slowly returned.
“I think it was stress,” she said. “I just know that I started eating more.”
Hill-Wilkerson soon ballooned to 198 pounds.
To the rescue came Stomaphyx, a new, incision-less way to help patients who’ve had previous weight loss surgery regain control of their eating.
Dr. Terrence Fullum, director of the Howard University Hospital Center for Wellness and Weight Loss Surgery and chief of minimally invasive surgery, performed the procedure on Hill-Wilkerson on May 28, and she lost 13 pounds in three weeks. She said her goal is to shed 40 pounds.
Fullum, the only surgeon in the Washington, D.C. area currently certified to perform the procedure, said sometimes the smaller stomach pouches created in bypass surgery become stretched over time and need readjusting.
With Stomaphyx, physicians go through the esophagus to perform the surgery while the patient is sedated. The procedure offers more advantages than gastric bypass, Fullum said.
“There’s no incision, so there’s no scarring. Also, because there is no cutting, the chance of an infection is dramatically reduced. Additionally, the recovery time is a lot less. Compare two days to about a week, maybe more.”
Hill-Wilkerson, a bariatric coordinator and clinical practice supervisor, said she had the surgery on a Friday and returned to work that Monday.
“I really like the fact that there’s not a long recovery time,” she said. “And you don’t have the pain that you do with an incision. I just had a sore throat and it was over in a day. That was it.”
For more information about weight loss procedures at Howard University Hospital Center for Wellness and Weight Loss Surgery, visit www.hubariatrics.com.
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