Shrinking Stella

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38743790/ns/health-health_care/

This is so cool, now they are doing WLS thru your mouth. My surgeon does revisions thru the mouth but not this… I think it is worth the read. The full article is at the link above.

A California woman who says she’s has been dieting for 50 years believes she’s finally found the solution to her weight-loss woes: A doctor removed most of her stomach — through her mouth.

Connie Harris, 60, of Carlsbad, this month became the first patient in the U.S. to undergo a sleeve gastrectomy, a surgery that eliminates 80 percent of the stomach, using a new technique that removes organs and tissues not in the traditional way, but through natural bodily openings.

“I was expecting the worst, at least a sore throat, but my mouth was just dry,” Harris told msnbc.com while recuperating from home. “I’m feeling good.”

While weight loss was her main goal, Harris said she was happy to join about 150 other patients across the country who have had the unusual operations known as NOTES — natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery — aimed at reducing scarring, pain, infection and recovery time. In fact, it’s the main reason she chose her surgeon, Dr. Santiago Horgan, director of minimally invasive surgery at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center.

“This guy has done gallbladders out of your mouth, an appendix out of your mouth, and this very operation vaginally,” said Harris. “He pulls things out of everywhere and he has some serious skills.”