Gastric bypass surgery involves stapling the stomach to make it smaller and reattaching the small intestine to bypass a portion responsible for the majority of calorie and nutrient absorption.

The procedure is only available to the morbidly obese (more than 100 pounds overweight) who have been obese for more than 5 years and shown a serious effort to lose their excess weight through not surgical methods such as diet and exercise.

Surgery in any form is risk-inherent and gastric bypass surgery can result in complications. Complications of gastric bypass surgery include infection, leaking of the stomach resulting from a failed staple, respiratory problems, and hernias. The most serious of these is a gastrointestinal leak that happens in 1 out of 20 cases. The resulting infection, if not caught quickly and treated accurately, can be fatal.

Complications of gastric bypass surgery rarely result in death but the death rate hovers around 1.9%. When considering this, remember that gastric bypass surgery patients are already in a very unhealthy state and their bodies are not in a condition to fight off serious infections that do sometimes occur even in routine surgery.

The risk of complications of gastric bypass surgery must be compared to the risks of living morbidly obese, which is a deadly condition that will eventually result in severe disabilities and early death.