Feeling Full? Can even the best endoscopic treatment be jeopardized by the psychological part of the disease that causes patients to eat inspite of not feeling hungry?
Most people do not. $150 million people fail to loose weight on diet or drugs. And they are willing to pay hefty out of pocket fees for a solution. Device start-up companies want to curb food intake via an investigational procedure called transoral gastroplasty (TOGa).
A baseline endoscopy is performed and the sleeve stapler (picture 1) is inserted under vision with an endoscope (picture 2 shows endoscope view).
Suction is used and the anterior and posterior wall of the stomach is inserted into the stapler and the stapling lines are fired. Next to the lower esophageal sphincter a sleeve is created along the lesser curve and the process may be repeated in order to create a sleeve of different lengths (picture 3).
Now the restrictor instrument manipulates and staples the tissue at the distal end of the sleeve until a pouch is created (picture 4).
This pouch limits the amount of food a patient can consume (picture 5).
The company behind the technology believes that they can offer this procedures as a minimally invasive office-based alternative to the $20,000, several-day patient stay in the hospital bariatric surgery.
The task ahead: make the technique work, expand the market of weight reduction and the clinical base for obesity intervention to include office based procedures and last but not least, market the devices to 10,000 or so Gastroenterologists. BTW, all TOGa patients need to be on a special diet and work out program after the procedure.
Can even the best endoscopic treatment be jeopardized by the psychological part of the disease that causes patients to eat in spite of not feeling hungry? In the meantime device entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are feeding on the new medical device opportunity in minimally invasive treatments of this national epidemic.
Further - the future ain’t what it used be.
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