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Birmingham Minimally Invasive Surgery, we’re proud to give you countless reasons to choose us over other weight loss surgery practices in the area. But don’t just take our word for it, when we ask patients why they chose us, here are the reasons we hear the most.

As far as private pay goes, we definitely offer the best price.

If you’re paying out of pocket for an operation, you obviously want a reputable surgeon, but you also want the lowest price possible. At BMI Surgery, a lot of our patients are private pay with many coming from places like Atlanta and Nashville for this reason alone. While our price for Sleeve Gastrectomy is only $9,999, we definitely have the best price in Birmingham, and possibly in all of Alabama.

Unlike many other weight loss surgery practices, we use staple line reinforcement.

Patients also really like the fact that we use staple line reinforcement for gastric sleeve. This reinforcement is used on the surgical stapler that we use during surgery to divide the stomach, and it provides security to the edge of the stomach where it is divided.  These special staple loads act as a hemostatic agent that stops bleeding and ensures there aren’t going to be any leaks.

It’s a great tool with countless studies backing it, and it’s actually one of the ways we’re able to keep our cost so low. Since we’re using this special kind of stapler, we don’t have to waste money putting in clips or drains to ensure there’s no post-op bleeding. Whether they’re just not aware of this newer technology or don’t want to change their ways, not every surgeon uses staple line reinforcement.

Dr. Long’s past patients refer their friends and family.   

Dr. Long has an excellent reputation, and many of his patients come from word of mouth referrals from past bariatric patients. Dr. Long also performs general surgery, and many of the general surgery patients tell their friends and family about their experience with Dr. Long. These patients as well as their friends and family frequently come to us for their weight loss surgery as well. To us, this is a true testimony of just how much he truly cares about each and every person who walks through our doors.

If you’re considering Dr. Long for your weight loss surgery, don’t take our word for it. Dr. Long and our staff receive regular outstanding reviews that you can read for yourself. No matter your reason for coming to us, you can be sure you’re in the hands of an experienced surgeon that’s dedicated to helping you meet your weight loss goals that will allow you to lead a healthier, more fulfilling life.

By Caitlin Hastings, Physician Assistant

If you’re considering weight loss surgery, chances are, you have many questions. From how to prep for surgery to what recovery is like, you probably want to get an idea of what to expect. While the payoff can be huge, the process of preparing for weight loss surgery can be quite lengthy, and the recovery can be just as emotional. But for those that are serious about getting back to a healthy weight, we have countless patients who will tell you that it’s more than worth it.

From preparing for the operation, to the post-surgery diet, here’s an overview of what you can expect when you decide it’s time to go forward with weight loss surgery.

6 Months Prior To Surgery: Begin Insurance-Required 6-Month Physician Supervised Diet Program

If your insurance covers the weight loss surgery, it’s usually about a 6 to 7-month process. This is due to most insurance companies requiring a 6-month physician supervised diet and exercise program before they’ll approve the operation. Regardless of whether or not you lose weight throughout the program, the goal is to document the fact that you’ve tried dieting and exercising, and you still need the surgery.

On the other hand, if you’re paying out of pocket for the procedure because you don’t have insurance or your insurance doesn’t cover bariatric surgery, we can get you scheduled for surgery fairly quickly.

A Month Prior to Surgery: Complete Pre-Op Testing

All patients will need a letter of medical clearance prior to surgery. Unfortunately, since a lot of obese patients have comorbidities like heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes, we often require pre-op cardiac clearance. This is to simply make sure your heart is safe enough to undergo the surgery.

We encourage patients to attend support group meetings prior to surgery. We want to make sure you have the support you need and can ask patients that have been through the weight loss journey the necessary questions to be successful.

1-3 Weeks Prior to Surgery: Attend Pre-Op Prep Class and Begin Home Preparations

No matter if you’re private pay or paying with insurance, every patient is required to attend the pre-op nutrition/prep class that is led by our bariatric nutritionist. She actually had gastric bypass surgery herself, so she’s very familiar with the process, along with the emotions that go along with it. Here, she’ll address all your questions and concerns while giving you information on pre-op nutrition, post-op nutrition, and everything else you’ll need to know about the surgery, including mental preparations.  

Also, during this time, we recommend prepping your home life in order to make things easier on yourself after surgery. Along with having a friend or family member come stay at the house, especially if you have children, we encourage you to have a pantry and refrigerator stocked full of easily-accessible diet foods and liquids. There are also five medications we prescribe after surgery that we recommend you have filled prior to the operation.

2 Weeks Prior to Surgery: Start Liquid Diet

Two weeks prior to surgery, you’ll start a full liquid high-protein, low calorie diet (protein shakes, pudding, etc.), and one day before surgery, you’ll start a clear liquid diet (broth, water, tea, or any other liquid you can see through). This diet is important because there are countless research studies that show going on a 2-week liquid diet before surgery actually reduces the size of the liver by purging toxins, and in bariatric surgery, the liver is always in the way. This diet allows us to actually get to where we need to go during the operation. It’s also really encouraging since you’ll lose weight before the surgery and continue to see the weight come off afterwards.

What to Expect After Weight Loss Surgery

Immediately After Surgery

Most insurance companies require a one-night stay in the hospital after surgery. However, if you’re not paying with insurance, surgery will be performed in our outpatient surgery center, and you’ll go home the same day.

If you’re having gastric sleeve surgery, we’ll go ahead and start you on the liquid diet immediately after surgery. If you have a gastric bypass, we will start you on a liquid diet the morning after surgery once you have an upper GI study. This swallowing study simply follows the bypass down to make sure there are no leaks or obstructions. As long as there are no issues, we’ll start you on the liquid diet following this test.

Post-Surgery Diet

Just after surgery, you’ll be on a clear liquid diet, and you will advance to full liquids at different times depending on the procedure that you had. After full liquids, you will advance your diet slowly by introducing soft foods, or foods of a creamy consistency, over the following weeks. After four weeks, you can start introducing meats and other foods that are a part of your normal diet.

The reason for this slow progression is that we don’t want to irritate the stomach after surgery. Liquids and soft foods are really easy for the stomach to break down so that it doesn’t irritate the healing process. This diet just gives the stomach the time it needs to heal.

Post-Surgery Restrictions

Until four weeks post-surgery, you shouldn’t lift anything over 10-lbs. We also don’t want you doing anything like sit ups that could strain the abdominal wall. This limitation is to help you avoid developing a hernia at any of the incision sites. After four weeks, we feel safe with you doing any and all exercises since everything should be healed up enough that you aren’t going to do any damage.

Success After Weight Loss Surgery

The patients that take their medications as prescribed and actually stick with the diet after surgery are the ones we’ve seen be the most successful. We’ve also found that patients who seek out support are also more likely to lose the weight and keep it off. That’s why we encourage our patients to join our Facebook support group, which is led by bariatric patients, and attend our hospital-sponsored support group that is held monthly. These support groups are a place where you can share your emotions and also get your questions answered by people that are on the same weight loss journey.

While weight loss surgery is quite an undertaking, both physically and mentally, the payoff can be bigger than you’ve ever dreamed. While most of our patients wish they’d done the surgery sooner, it’s never too late to get back to a healthy weight and get your life back.    

Birmingham Minimally Invasive Surgery is a caring group of professionals who specialize in all types of bariatric surgery.
 Our surgeon Dr. Jay Long has highly specialized training in bariatric surgery, having completed a fellowship in minimally invasive and bariatric surgery at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, where he focused on taking care of patients that are morbidly obese.  And we are so proud of our pricing that we publish the costs right on the front page of our website!  Insurance won’t pay?  We have a variety of financing options we can offer you so that you are able to get the healthy body you’ve wanted for years.  Visit us today at http://www.bmisurgery.com/ or give us a call to set up a consultation at 205-833-6907. 

By Scott Goss, BMI patient

For years, I was active, doing a job I loved that helped keep me at a healthy weight of about 180-185 pounds. That is, until I decided to open up a video store where I went from being very physically active at work to sitting on my rear-end all day playing games and watching videos. Looking back, that was my downfall.

I started gaining weight, and it just snowballed from there.

In December of 2016, I was 52-years-old and at my heaviest weight of 331 pounds. I had tried dieting and knew I needed to exercise, but it had gotten to the point to where I was almost too big to workout. Nothing worked. I couldn’t breathe, and I would literally get out of breath just taking a shower. That’s how out of shape I was. I just need something to jump start the weight loss for me.

My wife and I discussed me having gastric sleeve surgery, since she had just recently had it done herself. I decided to go for it and spoke with my primary care doctor. He said I was the perfect candidate since I didn’t have any major health issues other than being overweight, so he got me in touch with Dr. Long at Birmingham Minimally Invasive Surgery.  Dr. Long and I went over the different kinds of surgeries, and I ended up doing the gastric sleeve surgery on December 28, 2016.

Granted the first week after surgery was rough, but after that, it’s been easy street for me. I don’t have anything negative to say about the surgery. I haven’t had any problems at all, and since then, I’ve just been focusing on taking care of my body.

I even surpassed my goal weight that I thought was unattainable.

I set a goal weight of 170, but because I never thought I could really get there, I told myself that if I get close to that, maybe 180, 185, I’d be happy. Not only did I make it to 170, but I made it a little side goal of mine to make it to 165, which is half of what I use to weight. I actually even surpassed that goal. While I was wearing a size 44-46 waist, I’m now a size 30, and rather than needing a 4X shirt, I wear a medium.

While I made sure that I got my protein and liquid in, I never did record or track my food. I just let my body tell me what it needed, and if I wanted a little treat every now and then, I would have it. The way I looked at it, rather than deprive myself of something and binge on it later, I’d show some restraint and let myself have a little bit.

It’s really been a game changer for me.

I have so much energy now that I even went back to work doing what I’d loved 20 years ago, doing drywall. Every day I surprise myself of what I can do. I’m even the guy they come to when they need to get in a tight spot. One day, one of the guys said, “You know what you need to do? You need to gain some weight. That way they won’t put you up there in the tight spots!” I just grinned and said, “Nah, I’ll be alright.” I’m just glad to be able to do it.

We’re actually going to a birthday celebration in Costa Rica soon, and I’m going to get to go snorkeling and a bunch of other activities that I couldn’t have done at my previous weight. I also haven’t flown in an airplane since the surgery. I used to have to get the seat belt extender, and now I’m going to have tons of room, and I just can’t wait. As a matter of fact, I even took one of those seatbelt extenders home with me one time and still have it. When I go back to the airport, I’m going to give them their seatbelt extender and say, “I no longer need this. You can have it back!”

For anyone considering weight loss surgery, I would, without a doubt, tell them to do it.

If you’re thinking about it, and really want to change your life and get back the old you, do it. I wish I could go back and do it 20 years ago. You can’t keep hoping that everybody will fix you. You have to fix yourself and start taking care of your body. My advice is to listen to it; it will tell you what it needs.

I feel so blessed to have my life back.

Dr. Long and his team did a great job, and I would recommend them to anybody. I hope this helps someone make the decision to get the surgery done, so it can change their life like it has mine.

Birmingham Minimally Invasive Surgery is a caring group of professionals who specialize in all types of bariatric surgery.  Our surgeon Dr. Jay Long has highly specialized training in bariatric surgery, having completed a fellowship in minimally invasive and bariatric surgery at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, where he focused on taking care of patients that are morbidly obese.  And we are so proud of our pricing that we publish the costs right on the front page of our website!  Insurance won’t pay?  We have a variety of financing options we can offer you so that you are able to get the healthy body you’ve wanted for years.  Visit us today at http://www.bmisurgery.com/ or give us a call to set up a consultation at 205-833-6907. 

By Dr. Jay Long

If you’re reading this, I’m sure it’s not the first weight loss surgery article you’ve read.  If you’re like most of my patients, you’ve been out there scouring the internet, talking to your friends, and reading everything you can put your hands on about weight loss surgery.  

As a surgeon, I have the benefit of talking to patients all day long about their fears, their desired outcomes, but most importantly, the MISinformation they sometimes come across.  And that’s ok – one of my favorite parts of the job is getting to educate my patients on what their weight loss surgery experience is going to look like.

So, here are some examples of MISinformation I hear all the time, and my thoughts on the correct answers:

Weight loss surgeries have long recovery times and require big scars on my abdomen

I am pleased to say this is not the case at MY practice!  All of our weight loss surgeries are performed laparoscopically, which means scarring is minimal.  That also means that patients can go home the same day of surgery or the following day, and recover much more quickly in the comfort of their own homes.  

My weight loss surgery is going to easily fix all my life problems

I’m sorry my friend, but this just isn’t the case.  People come in all the time and assume that surgery is the end-all, be-all.  They don’t understand that there is still a lot of work that they have to put into the process.  First of all, they have to lower their calorie intake and EXERCISE. Unfortunately, I get a lot of patients that say “I just can’t exercise.”  And I get it – morbidly obese patients have reduced mobility and pain in their joints, so traditional exercise isn’t in the cards for them. But you can lay on the floor and swing your arms and legs up and down.  You can do simple things that will get you moving again.

Weight loss surgery certainly isn’t a miracle pill.  Once you’ve begun healing from the surgery, you absolutely have to entertain exercising as a major part of your long-term weight loss goals.  I try to redirect my patients and tell them – “think differently – change your mindset.” Work within your limitations – what CAN I do – not what CAN’T I do.  “My knees are bad” – well, can you swim at your local YMCA? Swimming and water activities like water aerobics are low impact and can help you get fit without making your joint issues worse.  “I have a bad back.” Then you can work out your arms. Lay on the floor and do leg lifts. There are endless things you can do as long as you WANT to do it.

I’ve heard some patients gain their weight back after a year

In fact, some percentage of patients do gain some portion of their weight back.  However, this is usually a result of not following the carefully crafted plan we have for you post-surgery.  We try to follow-up with patients after several months, but sometimes they don’t always follow up. The good news is, where we can reconnect with patients that have gained back some weight, we can re-evaluate them, encourage them, remind them of their cooking and eating and exercise protocols, and perhaps most importantly – get them involved in local support groups.

What will your appetite will be like?   That’s what all patients want to know. I tell my patients that you will definitely experience appetite suppression.  Some people are not hungry at all, but some patients are.  So I educate folks that it’s suppressed – not absent.

So in closing, hopefully my open, honest, frank advice gives you some clarity on some of the weight loss procedures you’ve been researching.  I always want my patients and friends to have ALL the information at their fingertips, so they can make the right decisions for themselves and for their families.    

Birmingham Minimally Invasive Surgery is a caring group of professionals who specialize in all types of bariatric surgery.  Our surgeon Dr. Jay Long has highly specialized training in bariatric surgery, having completed a fellowship in minimally invasive and bariatric surgery at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, where he focused on taking care of patients that are morbidly obese.  And we are so proud of our pricing that we publish the costs right on the front page of our website!  Insurance won’t pay?  We have a variety of financing options we can offer you so that you are able to get the healthy body you’ve wanted for years.  Visit us today at http://www.bmisurgery.com/ or give us a call to set up a consultation at 205-833-6907.   

A mountain of evidence shows that dieting doesn’t work for the vast majority of people who want to lose weight. In fact, many people who try to lose weight through diet and exercise end up gaining more weight in the long term.

Minimally invasive surgeries offer alternatives to diet and exercise fads that usually fail. If you want to lose weight, then you should consider these five surgical options.

LAP-BAND Surgery

LAP-BAND surgery uses an inflatable silicone band that reduces the size of your stomach. By reducing the size of your stomach, you can’t overeat without discomfort.  

Many patients like LAP-BAND surgery because their doctors can tighten or loosen their bands whenever they want. This makes it possible for you to control your stomach’s size throughout your life.

LAP-BAND is also considered one of the safest procedures because it only requires small incisions that heal quickly.

Sleeve Gastrectomy

Sleeve gastrectomy is a permanent procedure that’s often useful for severely obese people who cannot exercise. During the surgery, your doctor will remove a portion of your stomach and the upper part of your intestine.

Sleeve gastrectomy can benefit you in two ways. Reducing the size of your stomach prevents you from overeating. The procedure also limits the production of ghrelin, a hormone that makes you feel hungry.

Laparoscopic Gastric Bypass Surgery

Gastric bypass surgery is the most common bariatric procedure performed in the United States because it has such a high rate of success. Since the procedure requires minimal incisions, patients can recover quickly.

During laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery, your doctor will create a stomach pouch that holds about two ounces of food. The pouch gets connected to the intestine. By reducing the stomach’s size and connecting the pouch to the intestine, your body will absorb fewer calories when you eat.

Orbera Gastric Balloon Surgery

During Orbera gastric balloon surgery, a small balloon gets inserted in your stomach. Inflating the balloon with saline makes you feel full even when you eat less food.

Orbera gastric balloons are temporary. Most patients use them for up to six months. During this time, you can learn portion control. Since it’s temporary, many people prefer Orbera over other surgical options.

Revisional Weight Loss Surgery

Although gastric surgery is one of the most effective ways for people to lose weight, some patients experience weight gain several years after the procedure.

When diet and exercise cannot control weight gain, patients can return to their surgeons for revisional weight loss surgery.

The doctors at Birmingham Minimally Invasive Surgery have ample experience performing all five of these weight loss options. If you’re serious about meeting your health goals, you should contact the practice to learn more about your surgical options.