Background

Patients who have undergone sleeve gastrectomy or gastric bypass are typically discharged from hospital 1 to 2 days after surgery and followed closely by a multidisciplinary team of health care professionals. Before surgery, patients will have been counseled extensively on recognizing complications such as anastomotic leak, internal hernia, ulcer, dumping syndrome, and gallstone formation. They will have received information about constipation management, medication use, alcohol consumption, nutritional supplementation, contraception, and lifestyle behaviors.

Criteria for bariatric surgery

Great strides have been made in the field of bariatric surgery, with procedures that are relatively free of complications and provide effective treatment for obesity and its comorbidities.[1,2,3,4,5,6]

By the time this editorial is published I will have survived another winter. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love living in British Columbia and particularly the Lower Mainland. I have called it home since preschool, and love the people and beauty of our province. I can’t imagine residing anywhere else. I have taken care of numerous retirees who disappear around November only to reappear in my office the next April. These snowbirds escape winter by fleeing to warmer destinations.